IN the course of employment we are required to identify the performance levels of people as often as possible so that the people get frequent feedback on their performance.
Often, managers feel comfortable to give a good or neutral performance feedback -- or not give a review at all-- than to sit down with the employee and be frank and forthright about the deficiency and the steps necessary to achieve desired levels of performance.
Nobody likes to give out bad news. Sometimes, it can be difficult to inform an employee that his work is very poor, or that he has an attitude problem that is seriously affecting the work.
Frequent feedback means we can nip in the bud if there is performance -gap,
to deal with good performers it is easy because you can always say very good things to them. It is the poor performers who are difficult to deal with. Especially if the person is aggressive it is tougher to give negative feedback.
The performance assessment is rendered difficult if the expectations are also set very vaguely or in correctly. It may not be enough to develop a rating scale and leave it at that
the job is more difficult if the end result or consequence of both good and bad performance is not defined properly
if the goal is not clear then there is much argument at the end , people do not accept failure easily or
non performance easily. The ability and willingness to take responsibility is also very rare.
the bigger is the gap greater is the frustration; also if the supervisor if unable to pick courage to give
frank feedback the employee moves down in performance levels
for example for recruiters in my company we define performance standards
well in advance as follows
1- poor performance means billing below 50k per month----- no base pay hike - no incentive
2- below average means billing above 55 but below 60k per month-- base pay hike of 10%-- no incentive
3- average means 70k per month billing-- base pay hike of 12%-- additional incentive
4- very good means 80k billing per month base pay hike of 15%- plus additional incentives
5- excellent means- 100k per month- base pay hike of 17% and additional incentives
for each of the performance levels the reward is known in advance so also the consequence of poor performance
expectation of consistent performance is also made known as we speak of quarterly reviews for base pay hike
every employee is given a target sheet in advance at the beginning of the year and is explained about the expected performance levels which is average level at- 3
the advantage of our model makes performance review easy because every one knows where he or she is in the performance ladder
more over each one can choose to be at their own capable levels of performance , the system is driving the performance
more over every one can see out come of actions well in advance
both poor and high levels of performance are evidently mapped for consequences
in summary we may say that if the expectations are well defined dealing with poor performance becomes easy