Mid-Summer Carnival of HR: Education for HR

The mid-summer edition of the Carnival of HR is being hosted by Jennifer McClure of Unbridled Talent in her Online Degree edition. There are some very interesting and educational posts to be found and you can get a semester's worth of learning in a few hours just by reading these blog posts.

You can find learning material on leadership, corporate culture, diversity, technology, performance management, psychology, recruiting, social media, talent and much more.

So, if you want to be stimulated, educated, elucidated, and just made plain 'ol smarter then trot on over to Unbridled Talent and grab yourself some learnin'.

Performance Evaluations: "The GREAT EVIL"?: A Follow Up

My post on Performance Evaluations: "The Great Evil"? generated a fair amount of interest. I had asked in that post for people to participate in a small poll where I asked if performance appraisal needed to be eliminated, changed substantially, left alone or needed more training. Here are the results.

• To Be Eliminated 4 (19%)
• To Be Changed substantially 9 (42%)
• No Change, it Is fine the way it is 0 (0%)
• To include more training 8 (38%)

 As you can see, no one is happy with way it is. But not everyone is ready to get rid of it either. So what is the answer? Better yet, what are better questions? I am including one of the comments, from Andy Spence of Glassbead Consulting, where he asked a lot of questions. Read these. How would you respond to Andy's questions? BTW, Glassbead Consulting named this post one of the TOP 10 HR Transformation Articles of April.

 

Andy asks:

Good post and debate which raises some questions for me. Isn't the goal here to improve individual and team performance in line with organisation goals? Shouldn't line managers be monitoring and managing performance on a frequent basis anyway? Does the performance management process actually help organisations achieve this? Would the time, effort and cost better be spent on other 'performance improvement' activities such as manager training or online feedback tools like Rypple? I think we should assess each type of performance improvement activity on its own merits given the business context, capabilities (which are mentioned as a barrier) and goals etc.



 Answer Andy's questions by leaving comments down below. Thanks I am sure we will ALL be interested in your answers.

 

Performance & Recognition: Does Your Unspoken Culture Weed Out the Flowers?

In his book Thrive! (Amazon link), consultant Alan Weiss tells of the Tall Poppy Syndrome, a cultural phenomenon of Australia (and as it turns out of other British based cultures.) Wikipedia describes it thus: "Tall Poppy Syndrome (TPS) is a pejorative term used in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada to describe a social phenomenon in which people of genuine merit are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements elevate them above or distinguish them from their peers. Alternatively someone is said to be a target of tall poppy syndrome when his or her assumption of a higher economic, social, or political position is actually presumptuous, attention seeking, or without merit." We see the same cultural phenomenon in many United States high schools, often talked about as a culture of underachievement and usually associated with minority groups, although not exclusively.

I have also seen this in American business as well, depending on the employee group. One Union shop I worked in promoted just such an environment. If you stood out from the crowd you received unwanted criticism from your fellow workers. We even have well known phrases used to describe these people who stand out that include: Brown noser, ass kisser, and suck up. The social pressure these employees were put under to NOT achieve, to NOT stand out was enormous. And given a union environment where wages are given on "time in grade" basis there was no monetary reward for being outstanding.

In American business we like to think that we have a culture of meritorius achievement. But do we really? I know of businesses who have recognition programs, yet the employees do not want that recognition. They are afraid they will be harassed if their picture is on the wall or their car will be keyed if they are parked in the special spot. And do our pay systems REALLY promote merit, when the maximum you can give someone is capped at 2%?

So look at your organization. Do you have a culture that chops down the Tall Poppy? Do you have a system that kills the flowers in your company and keeps the weeds?

The Essence of Performance Management

In Collapse Jared Diamond writes "Businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn't want."

To me that is the essence of performance management. Read that same statement this way, in the context of managers and employees: "Employees have changed when their manager came to expect and require different behavior, to reward employees for behavior the manager wanted, and to make things difficult for employees practicing behaviors the manager didn't want."

To often we try to make this process more complicated than it actually is. Behavior reinforcement theory at its simplest.

Note: For those of you working on PHR/SPHR this is Skinnerian Reinforcement Theory found in Module 3.

Required Reading for the Week

There are several blog posts this week that are essential reading for anyone who calls themselves an HR Pro. These include:

1. Kris Dunn at the HR Capitalist writing on What's That Smell? Self Assessments & Performance Management. This is about performance management and the use of self assessment. In addition to his post you MUST READ ALL THE COMMENTS. There is true value in this feedback.
2. Margaret O'Hanlon at Compensation Cafe, writing on 10 Tools for Communicating a Teeny, Tiny Merit Increase Budget. She talks about clear communication and management training.
3. Ann Bares at Compensation Force writing on Think Twice Before Calling It a Cost of Living Increase. Read this to keep from making a major mistake.
4. Jon Hyman at the Ohio Employment Law Blog writing on Is “fat” the new protected class? Jon provides some important information to go along with my post on Fatism.
5. Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership, writing on MBA 2.0: Trading in Textbooks for Blogs? This post explains how blog posts have become a vital source for keeping yourself educated. 

So read away. Be educated. Be a pro!

Thanksgiving Carnival of HR: A Feast of Information

A Thanksgiving feast of HR information has been published over at Fortify Your Oasis. As you are sitting there multi-tasking while watching football take a look at what Rowan Manahan has published.

Performance Appraisal: How Often Is Enough?

I am often asked how often a manager should give an employee a performance appraisal. My response? All the time! To my way of thinking the job of a manager is to pay attention to an employee's behavior and performance on a consistent basis and to correct as needed and to praise when appropriate. Unfortunately that seldom happens. Many managers let employees go, waiting for the "annual" performance evaluation. Managers who have been trained, mentored or who have a good manager will handle situations as needed. They realize that if you want the behavior and performance you require for success in the job it has to be reinforced on a consistent basis.

Now when there is behavior that needs to be corrected it definitely needs to be documented and the rules need to be followed. However, even this has to be done at the time and not wait until an official performance review.

Do we need to have OFFICIAL review sessions. Yes, there needs to be a paper trail tied to compensation. Should it be annual? Every six months? Well that answer depends on how often your system and budget allow for compensation changes. This however, should not be the first time all year that the manager has ever said anything about the employee's performance, good or bad. If it is then shame on that manager. That session should be a review of all the previous discussion and to make sure that discussed corrections have been made. It should be an opportunity to plan what needs to be done in the coming year and what goals need to be set. How you tie it to compensation depends on budget and how your culture works.

One thing is clear. There should be NO surprises at all! Both parties should walk into that session knowing exactly how things are going to go.

Do I think this type of performance management occurs in the real world? Not too often would be my guess. What about you? Does it work this way for you? Do you have some good examples?

Performance Management: George Washington Style

With the celebration of President's Day in the U.S. having been this week I was reading some words of wisdom from George Washington. I thought his words would be, should be as applicable today.

"Be strict in your discipline; that is, to require nothing unreasonable of your officers and men, but see that whatever is required be punctually complied with. Reward and punish every man according to his merit, without partiality or prejudice; hear his complaints; if well founded, redress them; if otherwise, discourage them, in order to prevent frivolous ones. Impress upon the mind of every man, from first to the lowest, the importance of the cause, and what it is they are contending for."

Wouldn't all our organizations be better off if all our managers and leaders operated by these words. Performance management might not be such a big issue.

Just food for thought.

An HR Lesson From Psychology

Rob May over at The BusinessPundit blog wrote about the Dunning-Kruger Effect. I think this blog is required reading for all HR people. He writes "The essence of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge." Studies have shown that the most incompetent individuals are the ones that are most convinced of their competence. At work this translates into lots of incompetent people who think they are superstars." He then adds "...that if you have a manager that doesn't closely supervise work, he or she may judge performance based on outward appearances using information like the confidence with which these incompetent blockheads speak." That unfortunately is a situation most of us in human resources are familiar with, generally because we do not have an effective performance management system in place. We allow appraisals based on subjective measures to hold sway.

Now a corollary to the D-K Effect , as Rob writes, "...is that the most competent people often underestimate their competence." As a result, the very effective people in organizations may not get the recognition deserved. Rob suggests that organizations can handle this by doing the following:

1. Use as many measurable standards of performance as possible. Even idiots have a difficult time refuting concrete performance goals.
2. Encourage dissension and debate. This is tough, because if this is not handled properly, it can build a culture of negativity and risk aversion. Your goal shouldn't be to avoid risk, just to expose and understand it.
3. Show confidence in your best employees, even when they don't have confidence in themselves.

Human resources can fight the D-K Effect by instituting effective performance management and by conducting managerial training to incorporate these three suggestions.

By the way, Rob is asking for feedback from readers on their observations of the Dunning-Kruger Effect and how you may have dealt with it. So if you have some feedback for him follow the link above to his blog and leave your feedback, or leave it here.

Performance Management: Making it Work

Compensation consultant and blogger Ann Bares wrote, in her blog Compensation Force, about the Trifecta of Effective Performance Management. She points out that for performance management there must be three components:

1. A well designed program that has defined objectives, appropriate metrics, and ease of use.
2. Top management support that makes performance management an integral part of the organization..
3. Management Execution. This means that performance management actually gets done and done correctly.

My experience with performance management throughout my career has reflected the same things. I have found that if you make a system overly complicated, such as MBO/BARS, that no one will buy into it. So you have to arrive at a system that is effective with defined measures, accountabilities and competencies. I have also experienced what happens to a system when company leadership doesn't really care. There is no support, no accountability, no tie-in to company strategy or performance and thus, part three, managers do not do performance management. There is "no time" or they avoid unpleasant situations. Hey, it is not going to reflect on them, so why go through the effort.

I am not going to spend anytime talking about the positive effects of effective performance management, but I do encourage you to read Ann Bares' blog and click on her links if you have a greater interest in effective performance management.