Performance Reviews

Rockie · August 2002

I would be interested in knowing how many of you conduct performance reviews once a year and how many on anniversary dates.

The company I work for presently conducts them on anniversary dates and it is a nightmare trying to get supervisors to get their reviews in on time. A hospital I previously worked at conducted them once a year and even thought it was a big chunk to bite at one time, once it was done, it was done. It was mandatory to get them in on a certain date as it was effective the first pay period in December.

Also, if any of you went from anniversary dates to once a year, how did you affect this change without creating chaos.

Any help would be appreciated.

Dianna · August 2002

Rockie,

Good morning! We are a corporate training facility in Georgia (appx. 230 employees) and we do our performance reviews on the anniversary dates. Currently, I prepare a list of evaluations that are due by quarter so the managers know three months out what evaluations are up and coming. We also due a past due evaluation list each quarter that goes to our General Manager and Assistant General Manager. Part of what the managers are graded on are doing performance reviews in a timely manner, so although my current list has about 20 names on it, we tend to do pretty well with this routine.

Just a note, if a person is out on leave for any reason, the review date gets pushed out for the time they are on leave. Also, if they change positions and hence change rates, the evaluation date falls one year from the time of their transfer. Hope that helps.

Dianna

Don D · August 2002

Rockie: Our company requires an annual review, either on the employee's employment date anniversary or the anniversary of the last promotion. I have found this system much more effective and meaningful than requiring everybody to set aside a week of time each year to crank out all the reviews for their department. The latter seems to be much more process oriented than result oriented and becomes somewhat meaningless (i.e. I'm just doing this because the damned personnel office requires it). Companies who do this once a year for all staff at the same time often have salary adjustment formulas to take care of the guy who won't have a raise for 14 months, for example and they go through painful gyrations of forcing managers to set aside a week to do all this burdensome work. This, I think, results in "The Process Becoming The Objective" and the reviews are dumbed down to some degree. To make it work, WE generate the forms in HR at the beginning of the month prior to the review-due month, send them to the manager with a memo stating the due date, attach the salary increase form for the manager and VP to fill out, and send copies to the appropriate people in the chain. Increases are tied to our evaluations so you can bet that the ee won't let the process get to far over in the ditch before shouting foul. Our budget process more easily accommodates raises spread out over 12 months than all at one time of the year. Increases are fair and not driven by a discussion of how to squeeze all these raises into the budget during one payroll period. Once a month in executive staff meetings I will announce the list of reviews (and the managers) that are more than 2 weeks delinquent (at the CEO's request). It seems to work.

Anita · August 2002

We do 90 days reviews, and then yearly. I send the forms and a memo out the first day of each month to the supervisors who have employees that need reviewed. They have the entire month to complete and return to me. If at the beginning of the next month I haven't rec'd them back, I make a copy of the orginial memo I sent out with 2ND NOTICE hi-lighted and a copy goes to their immediate supervisor. Most times the supervisor's are on time or with a day or two, they don't like getting the 2ND NOTICES and knowing that the higher ups get copies I think helps. x:-)

Paul in Cannon Beach · August 2002

I guess I will throw out a dissenting opinion...

We switched last January from annual reviews on the employee's anniversary month to a bi-annual review for all employees in December and June. There were several reasons for this switch that made sense to us:

1) The difficulty of multiple review times and the lateness issue. I was spending alot of time tracking down evaluations.

2) The advantage of instituting organizational and departmental goals or training agendas at one time with all employees.

3) A year is a long time! Discussing performance issues within a six month period seem to make more sense.

We dont call them evaluations either. They are review and development sessions. The focus is on an interactive (employee and supervisor) discussion that discusses performance issues, training goals, and any road blocks that might be keeping the employee from succeeding.

So far, the reviews of our review system have been positive. Especially from employees. They seem to enjoy this process more and appreciate the opportunity to discuss issues rather than be "evaluated" in a one sided sense.

However, I still see this system as a work in progress. I hope any of this info is helpful to you.

[email]paulknoch@hotmail.com[/email]

moneyman · August 2002

We also use a bi-annual system. For new hires, there is an additional 90 day "introductory review" and then all employees are reviewed at their anniversary and 6 months later. Being a smaller company (approx 50) we can do this without much problems.

Our view was that this would provide the employees (and ourselves) better feedback on performance, keep a better eye on problem areas, and discuss/focus on the direction of the employee's growth. It was better to get feedback earlier, rather than later. We also noted in several personnel seminars that it seemed a growing amount of litigation was due to poor review procedures in that the employees claimed "I didn't know I wasn't doing well". I can't remember the case, but one court determined that since only annual reviews were given, this one company had to give the employee a year to improve his performance (this company did not have a good step-disciplinary system either).

NaeNae55 · August 2002

I am responding a little late here, but I would like to offer a different point of view. We do our reviews annualy for regular staff effective Oct 1, and then follow with managers on Jan 1. There are several benefits to doing it this way.

Supervisors have a good chance to think through the process a little more effectively. It makes it very difficult to give an employee you like a much better review than the one you don't care for as much when you are doing them at the same time. You are forced to think of facts and comparisons (not personal likes and dislikes). If you only have so much budget to go around, doing all at the same time insures at least a modicum of fairness (supervisor can't give his pet a big raise early in the year and then claim no budget left to the employee he/she doesn't like later in the year). And if the supervisor is prone to moodiness, all employees are affected the same so no employee is singled out to be punished or rewarded based upon the supervisor's mood.

Employees all know when raises can be expected so there is only a small window of time when they are interested in talking wages. Also, when I worked at a place that did them by hire date, some employees never got it. They would hear that someone got a raise and immediately expect one for themselves, even if they just had their own review 4 months ago (some people never get anything).

The manager's get their review's 3 months later. Therefore how they handled the regular employees' reviews can have a stronger impact (it hasn't been so long that it is forgotten).

From an accounting point of view, the budget is incredibly easier to do this way. We budget very specifically when it comes to payroll items, and having all raises at the same time makes a big difference.

Thanks for listening. ;;)

Don D · August 2002

I'm seeing comments that suggest to me that "The process has become the objective". When it comes to something as critically important as employee performance reviews, I feel the very worst reason to do them all on a certain date(s) is because it simplifies the process or accommodates the accounting systems or helps with delinquent reviews. Those are process issues and I feel the annual or bi-annual anniversary review is much more productive and constructive. We should never choose our methods based on what's easiest, what accommodates our internal systems quickest or which way will cause the least amount of headache for me, although those ARE secondary considerations. In one situation I know of when all were done at once, the process was simply mechanical, hurried through to get it over with, the payroll group was delighted and it was all less than meaningful to ee's. And, sadly, the PROCESS had become the OBJECTIVE.x:-)

ritaanz · August 2002

Our company has a combination of the two. All the Unit Managers get an annual review in January and a mid-year in July. Company goals are set by the President in December and obviously get trickled down to the UMs. These goals are incorporated into the individual UM's realm of responsibility. It works for us. The entire "ship" is going in the same direction.

The rest of the employess are reviewed on their anniversary date or promotion date and 6 months after that. These reviews go to the Department VP and HR BEFORE the UMs sit down with their personnel. If the VP or HR has any concerns regarding the review it can be discussed at that time. The UMs spend considerable time on these reviews and it shows.

Gillian · August 2002

I'll be the resident cynic on this one. The only performance appraisal that we do is the 90 day for hourly employees. Except for that one, we dumped the rest. In more than 35 years I haven't seen a system which really works and for the last 15 I have been asking my HR students if their appraisal system works the way it is supposed to, in theory. Hands are rarely raised.

No amount of training is going to turn an easy grading, or hard grading supervisor into a more objective one. Even worse, getting all supervisors to be objective is impossible. Further, some supervisors will never see the urgency that we do, so late appraisals are inevitable. The result, of course, is that HR turns into the performance appraisal police once a year, or all year if they are completed on anniversary dates. The reaction that I usually get to all this is a question as to how can we objectively give merit increases without performance appraisal. My view is that one can't give objective merit increases when they are based on subjective, error filled performance appraisals.

From a rather unique perspective, that of an expert witness, I must state that the FIRST thing that I look for when I review the documents in a discharge case is the performance appraisals. What I generally find is a disconnect between the appraisals and what the company says true performance really is and that does nothing but question the credibility of the company.

I do see some value in the more organizational behavior based types such as the 360 degree feedback approach. I don't see much value in the traditional trait based approach.

Don D · August 2002

OK Gillian. There's another tie! I am undecided as to who gets my curmudgeon hat annointed by Margaret. You or Pork............:-?

sonny · August 2002

Good food for thought. . how then do you ensure employees are getting feedback?

Gillian · August 2002

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 08-23-02 AT 10:09AM (CST)[/font][p]Speaking as a curmudgeon for the moment, then Don can have the title back, the only difference between feedback without an appraisal and with is the absence of one forced, rather unpleasant, 15 minute interaction per year. I hope that our managers get the message that the best appraisals are the daily and weekly catch - up sessions that they have with their employees. I can't guarantee that this occurs as regularly as it should but neither can those who use the traditional appraisal guarantee that their employees are getting the feedback that they should.

Squishypig · August 2002

We are a chain of restaraunts with about 250 hourly employees. Our evaluation schedule is a little weird. Unless you have a handle on it (no one bothered to tell me the schedule and it took me 3 months to get it straightened out) it can be extremely frustrating to implement.

For our managers, the first year they are evaluated every 2 months (with opportunity for raise) and then every four months after the first year. Our general managers (we only have 2) do these. These are in depth with more comments, action plans, suggestions and follow up letters. Since our general managers are really good about getting these done, these are not a problem even though the managers are evaluated so many times.

For our hourly, we do 30 day evals, 60 days evals and then every 4 months after the 60 day evals. So each of our hourly employees are evaluated 3 times a year. These tend to be pretty simple. While we try to make it easier on the managers by offering form evaluations with choices of Needs improvement, Meets Standards and Exceeds Standards, the managers see it as a waste of time and I spend a long time chasing the things down.

Policing these things is a huge chunk of my job and it has taken me about 6 months to get an effective tracking system in place. I each month I have to put together eval schedules for the managers, in the middle of the month I have to send out an updated list of the evaluations that are still needed. At the end of the month, I have to make sure that I have received all of the evals and report the ones that were not completed to the general manager and COO. Last month, one of our locations did not complete 64% of their evaluations and so their monthly bonus was severely curtailed.

Johnette (who although realizes the merits of evaluations, does not like to babysit other people to complete them)

Don D · August 2002

A rather complex system, indeed. But, I'm sure it's design and necessity are determined by the nature of your business and how you guys 'fast track' new employees with step-promotions and give corresponding raises (which is great). I suspect it is as much, if not more, for the reason of justifying (to others) promotions as it is to coach performance. Sadly, even if we don't realize it, much of the reason for having to install such a complex paper-trail system in the first place is because we know all of the material will likely have to be spread upon the table in response to EEOC charges from the guy who didn't get promoted to assistant manager as soon as the other guy with different characteristics did. I notice one giant key factor in the success of your program, and that's attaching the evaluation system's performance to bonuses. x:-)

Performance Reviews

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