Employee Ranking Systems LO16952

Alderlink@aol.com
Wed, 11 Feb 1998 16:25:13 EST

Replying to LO16840 --

Re John Constantine's 04 Feb and Fred Nickol's 06 Feb replies to the
thread on Employee Ranking Systems:

Having wrestled with performance appraisal issues for a while, I find
their positions on performance appraisal systems very compelling and
instructive. My experience as an employee and an independent, in both
situations doing HR work, has on quite a few occasions driven me to almost
just give up on PA systems myself. On the other hand, how does one run his
organization without one? How does one know what to focus on without a
system of setting goals and of reviewing what has been accomplished and
what needs special attention? How does one know that his people's own work
and personal development goals are being met? How does one then compensate
good work or prepare a program for those who need or seek improvement in
their work or in their ability/skills to do their work?

For the last 18 years, I've been subjected to a number of PA systems
myself. In the last 12 years or so, I've even been responsible, or partly
responsible, for setting up or modifying the PR system my bosses would
eventually use to review my own performance as an HR person. I have never
been completely satisfied with a particular system, as I have never been
able to completely satisfy all those who use the system I "sell" them.
There was always something that didn't seem right -- not objective enough,
time-consuming, intrusive, prone to abuse, complicated, doesn't fit in
with participative/team culture, etc. The critical comments would range
from the philosophical to the procedural, from the moral to the practical.
It would be one or the other, this or that, or all of the above.

Early on in the last decade, I've learned to simply stop proclaiming to my
peers, superiors, or clients that I've found the perfect PA system. What
I've done since is to invariably include a review of the PA process or
system itself, as part of the final phase of the PA cycle. In other words,
after getting done with the results of the PA, we'd subsequently sit down
and sift through the latest comments about the PA process from reviewers
and reviewees. As applicable and practicable, improvements would be made
and introduced to the PA users as soon as possible in preparation for the
next round of reviews.

In several discussions over the years, I or somebody else would broach the
idea of completely doing away with a system that "pretends to review, in a
hopefully fair manner, the performance and development of people in the
organization". Discussions would be heated until the following questions
are inevitably asked: From associates, "So, how am I gonna be paid? How do
I get raises? Or promotions?" ; or from supervisors /managers, "How am I
gonna decide how much more to give Bill compared to Joe? Or whether a
promotion is due? Or what training program Joe will be sent to?". We'd
somehow just end up agreeing on some improvements on the PA system for the
next annual review.

A couple of times, I've actually seen a whole PR system replaced with a
new one. The last company I worked with, in the first year of its business
re- engineering program, actually went into an extended company-wide
discussion of possibly scrapping the PA system altogether. The
"breakthrough" idea was in fact raised by the President/CEO himself and
was repeated on several occasions. Despite some very strong arguments
against PA systems per se, the consensus in the end, surprisingly, was
simply to develop a system that was "better" than the current one, not
scrap the appraisal process/system completely. At the end of the day, a
great majority agreed that they wanted to know how good or bad they did at
work after all and what can be done for one to do better.

In sum, I am led to think that each organization simply adopts a PA system
that serves its purposes, whatever those may be. The PA system that it
ultimately adopts (whether it is one outsourced from a consulting group or
crafted by management or developed from employee inputs, whether formal or
informal, peer or customer-driven) is what it thinks would serve it best.
In the end, the form that a PA system takes, the characteristics it
exhibits, the rigidity or the openness to change/improvement that it
assumes, and the slowness or quickness to change that it demonstrates,
depends, in varying degrees, on the organization's strategic goals, its
management philosophy, its organizational structure, its history, its
shared values, its current or emergent culture and sub-cultures, its
leaders, and its people.

Can we really presime to advise anyone what the better PA systems are? Or
whether we should scrap them altogether? I think there will be as many
opinions on the pros and cons of different PA systems, or of having a PA
system itself, as the number of belief and value systems that we each
embrace. At this point, I personally can't imagine an organization being
run without some form of an appraisal process. I see an appraisal process
as a way of finding out how well we're doing and growing, as part of an
organization and as individuals. Nor can't I imagine that there could be
one perfect appraisal system that an organization could adopt and with
which it could be forever blissfully happy. Conditions eventually will
change, which would in turn call for a review of the review process. I can
only imagine at this time that, among organizations with a PA system,
those that would expectedly thrive would be those who have somehow
established a way of critiqueing their system on a fairly regular basis
and who are for the long term firmly committed to continuous improvement.

Anyway, like the others who've followed this thread, I'd appreciate
hearing from those who know organizations that have completely scrapped
their PA systems. Hope you could share how these organizations have
addressed concerns as pay, promotion, succession, employee
education/development, etc. and how they are faring now compared to when
they had a PA system in place.

Thanks for the learnings so far.

Chuck Gesmundo
Minneapolis, MN

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