If it’s not review season at your organization, you probably aren’t thinking about performance evaluations. Often review time comes around just once a year, and it’s not top of mind any other time—possibly because so many people dread the process. 
For human resources professionals, that process can be even more stressful than it is for others because HR often is tasked with making sure managers give thoughtful time and attention to reviewing their subordinates—a tough job since many managers and supervisors consider time devoted to performance reviews as time lost for what they consider their real work. In addition to being review enforcers, HR professionals also may bear the responsibility of designing—and defending—their organization’s performance review process, a thankless task.
Thankless or not, the vast majority of employers participating in a recent survey report that they regularly conduct performance appraisals, and three-quarters rate their evaluation practices as average or above. The survey, conducted by Business and Legal Resources and released in June, found that 91.9 percent of the 1,481 respondents said they conduct performance appraisals. Most of the employers surveyed, 51.2 percent, rated their review system average, 21.9 percent called their process above average, and 2.1 percent considered their system excellent. But nearly one-fourth, 24.8 percent, rated their evaluation system as below average, in need of improvement, or even terrible.
Evaluation flaws
Besides gauging what employers think about their approach to performance reviews, the survey collected data on the worst errors employers see their evaluators making. Here’s the list of problems cited:
- Raters who don’t follow up with employees after an evaluation to check on progress was named as a problem by 40.1 percent of the respondents.
- Raters who don’t want to hurt employees’ feelings or overrate them, so they put all employees in the middle of the scale was named by 40.0 percent.
- Raters who focus on recent events rather than the entire review period, 38.9 percent.
- Raters who are late completing evaluations, 38.3 percent.
- Raters who are too lenient, 37.6 percent.
- Raters who don’t include details on why employees are rated a certain way, 37.4 percent.
- Raters who don’t include a plan for improvement, 25.5 percent.
- Raters succumbing to the halo effect—evaluating overall performance based on a single area in which the employee excels, 18.6 percent.
- Raters giving in to perceptual bias, meaning they base ratings on their own perception of what is right or wrong or acceptable, 16.4 percent.
- Raters who don’t complete evaluations, 13.8 percent.
- Raters who focus on a good or bad incident from when the employee first came under the rater’s supervision, 13.8 percent.
- Raters who overrate employees who share the rater’s interests/beliefs, 12.6 percent.
- Raters who underrate overall performance based on a single negative impression of the employee, 12.3 percent.
What reviews measure
When tweaking a performance review system, or starting from scratch, it may be helpful to know what other employers measure. The survey found that 80.7 percent of respondents measure employees’ overall performance in their review systems. Specific attributes are measured by 47.2 percent of the survey respondents, and completion of specific goals is an area measured by 50.9 percent.
For nonexempt employees, the top five factors used when evaluating performance were shown to be quality (89 percent), attitude/cooperation (74.5 percent), communication skills (72.9 percent), attendance and punctuality (69.9 percent), and dependability/reliability (68.1 percent).
The five least used factors in nonexempt reviews were interpersonal relationships (55.3 percent), safety (42.9 percent), flexibility (38.4 percent), resourcefulness (30.3 percent), and creativity (25.6 percent).
For exempt employees, the top five factors included in performance reviews were communication skills (79.1 percent), job knowledge (75.5 percent), achieving goals (72.5 percent), leadership (67.2 percent), and decision-making ability (66.7 percent).
The five least used factors for exempt employees were organizing ability (44.5 percent), attendance/punctuality (41.1 percent), financial management (37.2 percent), creativity (33.8 percent), and staff utilization (25 percent).
More harm than good?
Although the survey results show a level of satisfaction with the performance appraisal methods, the stereotype of dreaded reviews persists. And a recent university study suggests that negative feedback communicated during reviews can be discouraging even to strong performers interested in improving their performance.
The research, spearheaded by Satoris Culbertson, a management professor at Kansas State University, looked at how different personalities take criticism. The researchers separated a group of 234 employees at a large university into three groups—those who are motivated by focusing on learning and developing their skills, those who try to show their competence and gain positive feedback, and those who avoid negative feedback by avoiding tasks in which they might fail.
The researchers hypothesized that people who strive to learn and develop their skills would take criticism better than the other groups, but their research found that even those motivated by a desire to learn and improve were discouraged by criticism. Therefore, they remind managers and HR professionals to keep in mind how the person being evaluated interprets the review. Evaluators need to make sure what they’re trying to communicate isn’t misunderstood.