Increasing Performance Appraisal Particpation/Completion Rate

efeldman

We have a problem with late performance evaluations. Constant reiteration of the value of on-time performance management gets us no where.

If anyone out there has no idea what I am talking about because their managers handle reviews in a timely fashion -- why do they think that is?!

Most importantly, I am looking for someone who has had the same problem in the past but has discovered a solution...as I am hoping that solution would help us.

What did it take to turn it around?

HRforME

One solution I have seen is that raises don't occur for the manager until all that manager's perf evals are completed.  Hit them in the pocketbook where it counts the most. 

Honestly, I think everyone from all sides hates performance reviews.  I don't know a single person who likes them. But they are a necessary evil most of the time.  And can be bad documentation if they are not truthful.  Managers must be trained to look for review errors (i.e. only using the last few weeks performance, allowing one negative to overshadow the whole period, etc).

One thing I would look at is how long/cumbersome is your process? How many steps are there? Can you streamline it at all? If you do a 360 is it really beneficial?  Are changes happening both up and down the ladder?  We went from a circle 1-5 for 25 or so different areas to a 3 area review.  That is what they are doing well, what they need to improve and what the goals are (usually training/education/other improvement) in the next period.  Most take about 30 minutes or less.

 

TXHRGuy

Include timely completion of the performance appraisal process as a specific part of the performance appraisal for managers.  That's another way to hit them in the pocketbook.  Pocketbook will come up a lot in this discussion, probably.

efeldman

I figured as much.  We have a super simple review process that takes 15-20 minutes to complete for each employee, but we still only get about 45-50% completion.  It is really demoralizing for our employees to get such infrequent feedback.

TXHRGuy

So we're not just talking about slow turnaround, we're talking about simply not doing the appraisals at all in as many as 55% of the cases.  It sounds like there is some sort of underlying culture problem, too.  Our big thing here, a sales organization, is to emphasize the goal of managers to help their team to be successful.  When supervisors get "I"-centric, that's almost always a bad thing.  Do these managers even care about their team members?  Or, put another way, do these managers have any concern for the employees of the Company that have been put in their charge to help the Company be successful?

IT HR

I dealt with this at a previous company.  What it took to change was the message coming from the top down.  The directive came down that all reviews were to be done on time. I talked about all the reviews that were due the next month in our staff meeting.  The President got all of his reviews done to show that he was serious. Every staff meeting the managers had to talk about the reviews that were finished and not completed. If they were not completed the President wanted to know why and then the completion date.  Nobody wanted to "the one" that was singled out b/c his/her reviews weren't done.  I truly believe it was about changing the culture.  The President set the tone and he followed through to show that he was serious about this.  Yes nobody likes doing them, but they are necessary.  Oh and the President threatened to take bonuses away from the managers (which he didn't have to do because everyone started getting their reviews done on time!)