Defining Job-Evaluation Criteria Helps Avoid Performance Disputes
TEC Worldwide is an international organization of more than 7,000 business owners, company presidents and chief executives. TEC members meet in small peer groups to share their business experiences and help one another solve problems in a confidential round-table session. The following questions and answers are summaries of recent TEC meetings in Southern California.
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Q: Last year I introduced a performance appraisal system whereby employees assess their own performance, I present my evaluation, and then we discuss any gaps between the two. At first, it worked well; employees appreciated the opportunity to have some input into the process. Lately, however, we seem to spend more time arguing about whose assessment is right or wrong than we do about how to improve performance.
Where did I go wrong and how can I fix this?
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A: Ideally, performance appraisals should include both a review of past performance and a look ahead to identify opportunities for employees to develop their professional skills and improve performance on the job.
If your performance appraisal conversations keep degenerating into arguments about past performance, you may be overlooking two essential components of the process: defining the job and identifying performance measurement criteria. Wide gaps between management ratings and employee self-ratings often indicate a lack of objective measurement criteria.
Before your next round of performance appraisals, try the following. Sit down with each person who directly reports to you and jointly develop a list of six to eight key job responsibilities. These should not be tasks or activities the employee engages in; they should be specific outcomes the employee must accomplish to be considered a success on the job.
For example, the activity of an accounts-receivable clerk might include billing customers, resolving problems with invoices and collecting on delinquent accounts. A successful outcome would be ensuring that the company receives full payment for all accounts in a timely manner. Once you and the employee have reached agreement on the top six to eight job responsibilities, rank them by order of importance.
Next, jointly identify the job standards (the conditions that will exist when the employee has met the requirements of the job) and very specific measurement criteria for those standards.
To get the best results, performance standards should be objectively determined, open to only one interpretation, easy to measure and meaningful in terms of the work being performed.
For example, a job standard for the accounts-receivable clerk might be maintaining an average of 40 days outstanding for all accounts, with no account going out more than 60 days. The measurement criteria for that standard would be the average days outstanding for all accounts and the actual number of days outstanding for each individual account.
Implementing these steps accomplishes three important goals. First, it establishes clear expectations for on-the-job performance. Second, it gets employees to buy into the performance review process. Too often, employees believe they have no say in the process, which contributes to dissatisfaction with performance appraisals.
Third, it removes all subjectivity from the performance appraisal because it creates clear job standards and objective criteria for measuring performance.
There are many ways to conduct successful performance reviews. Regardless of the methodology used, both supervisor and employee must ultimately reach agreement on two critical issues: “What does good performance look like in this job?” and “How will both of us know when the employee has done it?”
Once you reach consensus on these questions, the performance conversation becomes a simple matter of reviewing whether the employee met the job standards as identified by the measurement criteria. From there, it’s an easy step to identifying opportunities for improvement and focusing on the future.
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Q: I expect to be in a strong hiring mode for the first half of 2001, yet our traditional sources of finding job candidates--employee referrals and newspaper ads--seem to have dried up. What has worked for other companies in finding good people?
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A: Recruiting employees in today’s competitive markets requires some creative thinking. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Use the Internet. List job openings on employment sites such as Monster.com. Post job ads on sites that might be visited by the kind of job candidates you need. Include a “Career Opportunities” section on your own Web site.
Make it fun. If your employees have stopped referring people, start a contest with a cash reward for referring the most new employees. Or give a day off with pay for each referral that gets hired.
Expand your boundaries. One Southern California company had success placing billboard job ads in cities such as Minneapolis, Buffalo, N.Y., and Chicago during the middle of winter.
Go where your job candidates go. For example, if you need to hire for an auto parts store, place job ads at the local raceway or in racing magazines. Explore nontraditional sources. Trade shows and conventions can offer a fertile hunting ground for job candidates. Ask your customers and suppliers whether they can recommend good people. Seniors, retired military personnel and workers let go as a result of downsizing also can serve as good sources for potential employees.
Above all, never stop recruiting.
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If there is a business issue you would like addressed in this column, contact TEC at (800) 274-2367, ext. 3177. To learn more about TEC, visit https://www.teconline.com.
