 One of my favorite movies of all time is the classic from 1999 Office space if you haven't seen that movie as much as I hate to tell you to do this Please pause this video right now go watch office space. You're gonna enjoy it It's it's really really funny and I think it holds up after 20 plus years Especially as I get older and have more work experience and have my own Then I can really relate to the plight of Peter the main character in the movie who has a bunch of different bosses Who are constantly coming by to give him what they think is helpful feedback on his job performance You know and somebody will come by and say, you know, we have covers on these TPS reports now And then five minutes later somebody else will come by and tell them the same thing and give him more feedback on that Not really helpful. He's getting all kinds of feedback They even bring in consultants to evaluate the performance and provide feedback on Performance of individual employees to make cutbacks and things It's no wonder that the guys in this movie end up go crazy They take they steal you know a printer a copy from the copy from the office and and bust it up when they all get Let loose sorry spoiler alert, but they they do that and there are days when I can certainly relate to that I would say the desire To do that based on you know, how you're getting feedback and what feedback you're getting really an important part of Leadership and communication and leadership is performance appraisal and and the systems that surround Performance appraisal. So that's what we're gonna take a look at in this video. How can we? Select an appropriate performance appraisal system How can we use it to the benefit of the organization and the employee and and what are some of the considerations then they go into things like that? So first of all, what do we mean by performance appraisal system? Well, a performance appraisal is really just a means of systematically evaluating a person and or process to establish Perform across established performance dimensions, right? So let's break that down just a little bit first of all performance appraisals are a system They're systematic for a variety of reasons not the least of which is so that we can apply them evenly across the organization and Use the same standards for people in the same roles or similar roles But there's a system there needs to be a process that everybody understands How they're being evaluated what they're being evaluated on and things like that. We use it to evaluate people We're gonna focus on people in this you can use it to evaluate evaluate a process as well But we're gonna focus on the people aspect of this and and then it's across established performance dimensions as I mentioned It's it's something that is known. This should not be a secret. These things should not be secret We want people to know what the expectations are and and help them achieve that. That's the goal So that's what we're looking at when we talk about performance appraisal How's performance appraisal used in organizations? Well, it's gonna vary from organization to organization But one of the primary things that use performance appraisal for is to provide feedback As much as I just trashed it from the movie office base really It's not the fact that he's getting feedback that's a problem in that movie It's how he's getting it and the fact that it's not very systematic and things but feedback is essential We need to let people know what they're doing and and then engage them on whether they're doing it Well, where where there are things they can improve upon those types of things So we need to be able to we need to have a system through which we can provide feedback to the members of our team So performance appraisals are effective for that function We also use performance appraisals to guide development As people grow in their jobs and in their careers. They need Assistance they need help knowing how to grow and how to develop new skills and refine skills that they should have and So for so we use performance appraisals to to guide development Okay, we also use it to inform our personnel decisions. We use it as a way to measure You know who's doing a good job? Who has room for improvement? Who do we want to move to different positions? Who do we need to let go who should we promote those types of things? So we use performance appraisal to inform our personnel decisions We also use it to determine rewards and compensation if you're looking at who's gonna get a raise Who deserves a mump and pay who deserves a new title or promotion so forth? Rewards of that sort. We're gonna use performance appraisal to make those determinations And then we use it to identify A team member's value to that organization in the end the organization directly is there to accomplish something usually That's to accomplish, you know some sort of profit if you're if you're a for-profit business Or if you're a nonprofit or some sort of organization like that then The organization exists to achieve a goal and to to meet some sort of purpose So we're identifying the value of each individual to that organization in meeting those goals Whatever those goals may be so we use performance appraisal to to weigh out Is this person providing value to our organization or are they not? So again, there are a variety of things that we use performance appraisals for these are some of the key ones some of the More common ones, but there are lots of things that we use performance appraisal for There are also as I've kind of alluded to lots of issues in performance appraisal lots of ways the performance appraisal Can go sideways and be less functional and not as useful and in fact can be Destructive or distracting in an organization. So let's take a look at some of these first of all We need in performance appraisal to be concerned with right validity and reliability Validity and reliability what we mean by this first of all validity means does the instrument measure? what it's supposed to measure so whatever performance appraisal instrument or or System technique that we're using Does it actually measure what it's supposed to measure? Is it appropriate for a person in that position in that role with those goals? Is it is it measuring what we think it's measuring? So we need to be sure that it's a valid Instrument and then we need to be sure that it's a reliable Instrument so we examine reliability which is does this instrument yield consistent results each time? That it's used now that doesn't mean each person gets the same rating or ranking necessarily, but Does it really does it does it tell us kind of the same information from situation to situation is it applied? It cannot be applied equitably across an organization or across a particular function You may have different performance appraisal standards and systems that use for different levels or different employees different areas, but When we're talking about people who all work in the same general area doing the same sort of function and we're using that same Performance appraisal system or technique to evaluate them. Is it yielding consistent results? Is it telling us the same things each time or is it more wildly different and dependent on the person administering that the performance appraisal and You know different factors like that. So we want to make sure that the instrument is both valid and reliable So we check validity and reliability In addition, we need to look out for a couple of different errors here There are a variety of different errors that are common here one is central tendency error So if you're using a ranking system, for example, that that uses a system, you know one through five or Pour through excellent and you have different Levels that you're like a Likert scale that you're using, you know to to evaluate There is a tendency at times for people to just put a C or three Right down the middle whatever the middle one is they just choose kind of right down the middle And we have this ability this tendency to just kind of evaluate everyone right there in the center So that nobody really is ever doing very poorly, but also not really excelling or doing well That's not really informative It doesn't accurately represent. I mean certainly not everybody in the organization is straight down the middle So we need an instrument and and the application of that instrument that avoids the central tendency error We also need to avoid going either in the other directions We want to avoid being overly strict or overly lenient you'll have people that you know will mark all you know Outstanding performance for everybody and that's not very helpful and or the other direction They'll say oh poor performance because they think oh everybody has room to improve So we have those tendencies as well We need to avoid those things and be on the lookout for those things so that we are giving you know an accurate and fair reflection of the performance We want to avoid the halo effect kind of assigning Sainthood to a particular employee for whatever reason they've done something really great So we just all of a sudden constantly giving them High ratings and all the areas and so it's carrying over We need to be able to evaluate people fairly in the different areas that we're evaluating them in if somebody's really good And one thing that's great indicate that but they may not be great in other areas It's okay to indicate that just because they're super good at one thing doesn't mean we have to rate them highly in everything That's what need to watch out for the recency error meaning we tend to be more influenced by the things that have happened Most recently right so if you if you're evaluating somebody on the basis of you know a year or six months or whatever We need to look at that time in full and not just rely on what happened in the last couple weeks Something really bad happened yesterday So now everything on their evaluation is in the dumpster right or something they did something really spectacular a week ago We let that override maybe their performance from the rest of the year. We need to be able to evaluate Consistently across the board for that year. We'll talk about one of the ways we do that Maybe is either evaluating more frequently or Taking notes along the way so that we can review that if we are you know looking at this over a longer period of time So but we want to avoid that that recency error And of course we always need to be aware of and try to avoid our personal biases If you're somebody who I'm you know, I had a professor in in in college who just very clearly Had a bias toward the males in the class and was much harder on The ladies in the class much harder on the female students than he was the male students And that showed up in his grading and showed up in how he just how he Called on us for answering questions and treated us with in the tone of his voice and things His personal bias was getting in the way of his evaluation of our performance in that class Well, you know, none of us are any different if we have personal biases Against somebody for things that are unrelated to that job performance Then we need to really work to set those aside and focus strictly on The tasks and things that are related to that job performance and just be cautious to try and avoid as much as possible our own personal biases in Performance evaluation, but these are all really very common things Which is why we engage in training for people who are doing performance appraisal and we should engage in norming What we call norming for people who are engaging in performance appraisal If you have, you know, a handful of people who are evaluating a larger group We want to get those that handful of people together for norming so that we're all Reading things the same way and understanding what the standard is in the same way and applying it in relatively the same fashion Okay, so we want to be on the lookout for these issues in performance appraisal There are a variety of techniques we can use in performance appraisal and this is just a listen We're going to go through each of these individually real quick here But we're talking about graphic rating scales critical incident technique behaviorally anchored rating scales behavior observation scales management by objectives and then briefly assessment centers as well Let me give you an example of each of these just real quickly here So you can see kind of some of the different technique techniques though that we use in performance appraisal So the graphic rating scale is classic one It's pretty much just you know There's a general category of things and you indicate whether that person again kind of a Likert scale have they met the requirements? Have they not have they partially done it that you know on a scale of one to five Where would you rate them on each of these categories and this is applied then across people in all areas of the The the area where the organization or whoever you're evaluating but pretty straightforward and then you can make comments as You know as it relates to this to support your decision why you pick this or that these again are the types of areas where we want to avoid those central tendency errors and the strictness and leanness errors, you know giving everybody all Straight down the middle or all far exceeds or all does not meet or whatever We want to be sure that we are accurately identifying across the scale on each of these items But but pretty classic pretty pretty easy to use a graphic rating scale Critical incident technique goes a little more in detail We have the duties that are listed there and this could vary from organization organization Obviously, but you have some in some standard that you're looking at there for the duties or whatever tasks you're evaluating that person on Then you'll identify what the target is for that what they should be doing what your hopes are for them to be doing it And then you identify specific incidents along the way not just all again avoiding recency avoiding that type of thing We want to look along the performance evaluation schedule and and identify and take notes on when certain things happen So that we can have specific examples of critical incidents that identify whether or not they're Actively meeting these goals, and then we can discuss and go from there toward development. So there's the critical incident technique There's the behaviorally anchored rating skill. This one gets a little more complicated a little more Detailed which is you know good and bad complicated means more time-consuming and and and really takes a lot more training to For the evaluator to be able to apply effectively. So it does take more time and resources in that regard Also provides the employee with some great feedback tone gives them very detailed information on Where they're at and why they're there why they're at that level or whatever So we you have these different levels of groups and then specific identifiers That identify where they fall on that scale And then these are these are related to then behaviors as you might imagine from the title behaviors that that employee demonstrates in relation to those items the behavior observation scale is kind of a mix between the the the the the other behavior scale and the The first one we talked about just kind of a Likert scale, right item. So it does apply specific tasks Then identifies specific tasks, but then a basic Likert scale on usually on whether or not the person is meeting That task so it's a little less detailed a little less in depth So it's a little easier to use for most evaluators, but it doesn't provide quite as much depth in like a three three-dimensional type way for the employee, but But it can be a good hybrid of those things providing more detail than the one and less time-consuming less Evaluation error than the other Let's have manners management by objectives where this is where the organization specifically lays out This is what you're being evaluated on this is what you're being judging on in detail These are not you know general categories or broad categories They are and it's usually part of a larger system management by objective is usually a larger system That's in place in that organization, but and then it's used for the evaluations as well where we identify Okay, this is what we said are our goals and this is have you met these and have you worked toward these and and you're gonna Give a rating your supervisors gonna give a rating you're gonna get input from a variety of different areas and usually in MBO as well and Then finally one that some organizations have begun to use what we call assessment centers where they send their employees out to a You know off usually an off-site center where they're evaluated for different a variety of different things could be Could be their aptitude in a particular task area could be You know for some aspect of leadership development. It could be for a variety of different things But assessment centers are usually off-site centers where different types of evaluations and performance appraisals are Administrative so when you're performing a performance appraisal one of the things that you're doing Obviously is giving feedback and that can go a lot of different ways So I have a couple tips here for you just on providing feedback effective feedback things to keep in mind when you're Addressing an employee in an important in a performance appraisal. How do we provide them with effective feedback? Well, first we want to be specific You don't just want to you know be generalizing things. Yeah, you're doing a pretty good job in this area, and it's okay That's not helpful for anybody. You want to be specific These are the things in detail that you are doing well These are the things that you're accomplishing and these are the areas specifically that I need you to You know work on improving and give them some specific areas not just you need to work harder, you know do better Again, that's not very helpful. How do you how do they do that? How do they work harder? How do they do better give them some specifics on that? So you want to be specific in your feedback? You want to offer examples again part of being specific then is you know offering examples of well, how can you work hard? You need to you need to Better production out of you. So offer them some examples So, you know there are times when you extend your lunch break a little bit too far or you're obviously on social media a lot Or whatever let's cut those things out Let's offer some examples of things that they can do to improve their performance We need to show a desire to help them improve It shouldn't just be all coming down on them like a ton of bricks right and telling them how terrible they are and Giving them the sense that they're going to be on the way out the door unless that's the case But but we need to as a you know somebody in this type of position if we're giving that performance appraisal presumably We're somebody who's in a position then to help them improve and and would benefit from that ourselves So we need to let them know that we want them to improve that we are here for them to improve that We're going to support them in that and and help provide them with the tools that they need to do so So we need to show a desire on our part to help them improve We need to balance the positive and the negative these don't all have to be you know just massively critical sessions They shouldn't all be Rainbows and unicorns either it should be some balance of the positive and negative We need to acknowledge what where there's area for improvement and and encourage the employee to Improve in those areas and give them the tools to do so, but we also need to acknowledge where they're where they're doing Well, what are they doing? Well, let's give them some kudos Let's let's balance the positive and the negative so that they don't leave these feeling like they just got knocked around a bit We need to frame things in proactive and positive terms Even when you're given bad news there are different ways that you can give that bad news Right, and I'm not saying, you know sugarcoat everything I'm saying though that there are ways that we can frame things with our language with a Broad and wonderful language that we can use to frame things in a way that is proactive that shows a light sort of at the end of That tunnel, you know, this is an area where you need some improvement I need to see some improvement in this right away And here's how you're going to be able to accomplish that you have the ability to do this it is achievable Let's go after it. Let's put those things in proactive and positive terms then for that person We need to check for understanding at the end of all this We need to ensure that that the the person walks out of there understanding what it is They're doing well where they have area for improvement and and what we expect from them moving forward And we need to check for that understanding not just assume that they've grasped it But we need to check for that and and make sure that they that they have a full understanding One last thing in terms of performance appraisal that tends to come up is this idea of rewards and motivation So a couple things to keep in mind again There there are a couple of different functions that we have for reward systems and these are oftentimes tied to performance appraisal You know when you're somebody's doing a good job They sometimes get rewards or if they're not and you eat angle that carrot in front of them So that they will go after it and try and do better jobs so there are lots of different functions for reward systems include things like this like job effort and performance that We can use it to try to increase job effort and performance improvement performance We can use it to try to improve attendance and retention rewarding things like showing up for work on time and showing up for work every day and and sticking around you know longevity retention meaning People stay with the organization. We can reward people for staying with that organization We can use it for to enhance employee commitment Reward system to enhance employee equipment commitment to that organization by rewarding them in some way based on performance With job satisfaction a lot of this, you know rewards can can bring obviously job satisfaction can help us enjoy our job more and just in general occupational organizational choice and kind of tied back to retention are people going to Remain in this occupation is this where they for example right now teaching is an area where they're struggling with occupational and organizational choice right they're struggling to get people first of all to commit to remaining teachers because the It's not what they did the teacher said idealized and it's it's becoming a real struggle to get people to stay in teaching They're leaving teaching to go to different Occupations and if they are staying in teaching they may be moving to a different school if they're not pleased if they're not Satisfied with the rewards in the system that they're in so we need to think about those things as sort of functions of a reward system Why that system can be important? The other thing we need to bear in mind is that there are different types of rewards and people are Motivated differently as a result. They have extrinsic rewards and intrinsic rewards Extrinsic rewards are those that are external to us so things like money things like You know objects every once in a while my employer will send me little trinkets and say hey, thanks You're doing great John. They'll send off, you know great great things like a phone charger or I've gotten socks before we got a really cool Yeti water bottle the the logo on it the organization So those are extrinsic rewards and they provide you with things in addition to things like money in general and certainly raises and Additional vacation time or benefits like that. Those are extrinsic rewards but we also need to remember that that people can be motivated intrinsically and that's some people are are Primarily rewarded or motivated intrinsically meaning within themselves This idea of you know would do the work because the work matters Because enjoy honestly, that's why I teach one of the reasons I teach. I don't know for you So I get paid for for teaching and I'm grateful for that. But but I really do love Teaching because it fulfills me it gives me a purpose It makes me feel good about myself and good about a job. Well done when I when I leave a class And I feel like students really have an understanding or had you know kind of that aha moment the light bulb went off There's nothing more motivating for me and that's totally an intrinsic thing for me. I'm very motivated intrinsically. I'm very Internally challenged, you know, I challenge myself. I want to win I'm a competitive person that and I'm motivated intrinsically I'll tell you another example. I'm diabetic and For years my wife my family my endocrinologist have all tried to get me to change my eating habits and This type of thing and be more aware of these things and test my sugar more often I just haven't been about it doesn't really have been something wasn't something that really interests me even though it should But then I got this glucometer the continual glucose monitor Right one of those things that sticks on you and tells you your Luke monitor your glucose level It tells you like every five minutes where it's at That to me has been more effective in controlling my diabetes in anything mostly because I want to beat it I want to beat my glucometer and not beat diabetes, but I want to beat my glucose monitor I don't want it to get about that. I'm so internally motivated by this that it really has I've dropped my my you know my Overall glucose levels my my a1c is the call has dropped significantly since I got that Because of that I'm much more aware now when I reach for something to eat or something to drink I think okay in 10 minutes. What's my glucometer gonna say? I'm not gonna let that machine beat me. So I make a different choice a lot of times So I'm intrinsically motivated now that doesn't mean I don't like extrinsic rewards. I do I like being paid I like the little gadgets that my organization sends me and I like the little you know Extras that come along with that, but I'm also very intrinsically motivated We don't want to forget that we want to balance those things out people take pride in their job and people You don't want to work hard a lot of times. So let's let's honor that and let's focus on that as well Okay in general we need to have a holistic view of performance appraisal And not see it as a chance for and not let our employees and team members see it as a chance for us to just You know break out that stick and you know tell them everything that you're doing wrong performance appraisal should be an opportunity for us to Honestly evaluate that person's performance to tell them these are areas for improvement But also these are areas where you're doing well and this is a why it's important that you do these things well We need to balance all of that in there and use this as a time for honest reflection and Motivation for that person and encouragement for that person and and keep those things in mind There was different considerations then okay So I hope you will continue on with performance appraisal in a new light now If you have questions about performance appraisal or anything else related to Communication and leadership, please feel free to email me. I'd love to chat with you in that way But in the meantime, I hope you will get out there and that you will have a new perspective on performance appraisal as both the person receiving that appraisal and receiving that feedback and the person providing it and that you'll keep these things in mind When you're in that seat as well