Ed Cornelius, one of my favorite grad school professors, told the story of being hired by the Navy to develop a new performance review form. After meeting one-on-one with multiple naval officers to better understand the challenge, Dr. Cornelius went back to the admiral who had engaged him and said, You don't need a new form, you need a new process. The admiral responded, Dr. Cornelius, I hired you to develop a new form. Are you going to develop a new form or shall I engage someone else?
Many organizations are committed to the traditional performance review process. And to be fair, this approach can provide effective performance feedback when upper management commitment is strong and managers are well-trained in how to conduct them. But like the Navy, when these organizations observe it's not working as well as it should, they think the problem is the form.
Meanwhile, many other organizations have concluded that the annual or semi-annual review is largely a waste of time for their cultures. Managers in these organizations hate traditional reviews because they tend to create conflict. Employees hate them because the feedback isn't timely - it might occur months after the actual performance took place - and they sense its primary purpose is to justify smaller than expected pay increases.
Whether or not we should have annual performance reviews is the wrong question. The right question is, How do we provide timely performance feedback that is meaningful to our workers and improves performance?
If an organization lacks a system for generating timely, neutral feedback, I guarantee the only time employees receive feedback is when they do something wrong. My article on Bad Referees covers this natural, human phenomenon in more detail.
Attempting to train supervisors and managers on how to give more positive feedback has mixed results. They typically end up using the feedback sandwich technique. The feedback sandwich wraps two positives around a negative. Such as:
You met our $10,000 monthly goal last month, well done. Too bad you had 7 emergency call-backs - you need to improve the quality of your service in order to cut down on those. But I'm glad to see you're achieving our volume targets.
This widely used technique also has its share of critics. My perspective is that, like the annual review, the feedback sandwich is better than giving no feedback or only negative feedback. But there are better ways.
Take sports, for example. After each game, coaches review key statistics with the players. The quarterback reviews metrics like how many passes he attempted and completed. Defensive players review how many tackles they made and how many plays they found themselves out of position, etc. The coaches even grade the players on their performance based solely on those metrics. Pro golfers track how many fairways they hit and how many putts they stroked during the round to see if they need to spend more time hitting drives or stroking putts during their next practice session.
Today, even small organizations have access to performance data much more quickly than they ever have before. Some systems are able to provide real-time reporting on critical performance metrics. Smart companies are harnessing that data into meaningful feedback that's easy for the employee to understand and is perceived to be fair and neutral. That's why dashboards and report cards are more motivating than annual reviews or the feedback sandwich.
A true HR Business Partner can help your organization develop feedback tools that motivate. Not a new form, but a new process that provides timely, neutral and fair feedback relative to individual, group or company goals.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
This New Hire is Not Working Out
We take a wait and see approach with new hires.
If we need 3, we hire 5 and hope only two wash out.
We place a mirror under their nose. If the mirror fogs up, we hire them.
We don't buy uniforms for new hires until after their 90 day probation is over.
I'm not overly critical of these approaches. After all, I recruited that way myself for the first ten years I was in operations management roles. I figured a vacancy was inconvenient for me, so it was best to hire fast to get the open slot filled, then monitor the new hire closely once they're in place. Any signs of trouble and I would cut my losses.
But eventually I ran some numbers and concluded I was going about it all wrong. There were at least three problems with my own wait and see strategy. First, it's expensive. Payroll is typically a company's largest single expense. Doubling up on it is a costly hedge. Second, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy which becomes embedded in our organizational culture. If we expect a high percentage of new hires to quit, a high percentage of new hires actually do quit. Third, thinking that an employee is going to fully commit and be engaged while we sit back and play wait and see is foolish. Employee engagement doesn't happen that way.
I got tired of this roller coaster and committed to learn more about employee selection, on-boarding and engagement. As a result I began to put more effort into choosing the right person to start with. That meant becoming a better interviewer and asking questions that were better predictors of performance. It also meant incorporating at least one pre-employment assessment. I used to believe paying for a DISC profile on two or three candidates I might not offer jobs to was a waste of money. But I soon discovered that the return on investment of that simple tool was huge. After adopting it my good hire percentage went up significantly. It helped me make wiser hiring decisions, and perhaps more importantly, helped me avoid bad ones.
I also began to put more emphasis on on-boarding. Employees get buyers remorse just like employers do. I made it a mission to make sure that no new hire in my department would regret taking themselves (even temporarily) off the open job market to join our team.
Want a new hire to question their decision? Hand them a stack of faded, used uniforms with stains and holes or rips. Assign them a truck or a workspace that's dirty and cluttered from the last person who occupied it. Don't have a plan - just throw them in the work and hope they're productive. Don't take them to lunch the first day or spend time with them during their first few weeks. Don't help them visualize what success looks like in their new job.
Want them to commit from the outset? Do these two things: put more emphasis on selecting and less on hiring, and demonstrate a sincere commitment to their success by committing resources, including your time, to them from day one. Do that and you'll find that your bottom line is much better off than it was with the conventional wait and see approach.
If we need 3, we hire 5 and hope only two wash out.
We place a mirror under their nose. If the mirror fogs up, we hire them.
We don't buy uniforms for new hires until after their 90 day probation is over.
I'm not overly critical of these approaches. After all, I recruited that way myself for the first ten years I was in operations management roles. I figured a vacancy was inconvenient for me, so it was best to hire fast to get the open slot filled, then monitor the new hire closely once they're in place. Any signs of trouble and I would cut my losses.
But eventually I ran some numbers and concluded I was going about it all wrong. There were at least three problems with my own wait and see strategy. First, it's expensive. Payroll is typically a company's largest single expense. Doubling up on it is a costly hedge. Second, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy which becomes embedded in our organizational culture. If we expect a high percentage of new hires to quit, a high percentage of new hires actually do quit. Third, thinking that an employee is going to fully commit and be engaged while we sit back and play wait and see is foolish. Employee engagement doesn't happen that way.
I got tired of this roller coaster and committed to learn more about employee selection, on-boarding and engagement. As a result I began to put more effort into choosing the right person to start with. That meant becoming a better interviewer and asking questions that were better predictors of performance. It also meant incorporating at least one pre-employment assessment. I used to believe paying for a DISC profile on two or three candidates I might not offer jobs to was a waste of money. But I soon discovered that the return on investment of that simple tool was huge. After adopting it my good hire percentage went up significantly. It helped me make wiser hiring decisions, and perhaps more importantly, helped me avoid bad ones.
I also began to put more emphasis on on-boarding. Employees get buyers remorse just like employers do. I made it a mission to make sure that no new hire in my department would regret taking themselves (even temporarily) off the open job market to join our team.
Want a new hire to question their decision? Hand them a stack of faded, used uniforms with stains and holes or rips. Assign them a truck or a workspace that's dirty and cluttered from the last person who occupied it. Don't have a plan - just throw them in the work and hope they're productive. Don't take them to lunch the first day or spend time with them during their first few weeks. Don't help them visualize what success looks like in their new job.
Want them to commit from the outset? Do these two things: put more emphasis on selecting and less on hiring, and demonstrate a sincere commitment to their success by committing resources, including your time, to them from day one. Do that and you'll find that your bottom line is much better off than it was with the conventional wait and see approach.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)