Whether you're rolling out performance reviews for the first time at your company, reintroducing them after a hiatus, or continuing them but want a "pop" or creative boost to make them more relevant and appealing, use your creative eye to not only reflect the past year's performance but to drive future change by fostering an achievement mindset. Performance appraisals, it turns out—far from being a burden and an onus on managers and staffers alike—can be one of the "low-hanging fruits" that catapult your leadership career as an effective manager and help align your team around collective accomplishments and professional development.
However, if you’re not reinventing and upgrading your template every few years to reflect the new business challenges coming your way, you’re missing the point of the exercise. Reviews are intended to serve as living, breathing reflections of the challenges your organization is facing at any given time, and the pace of change demands upgrades and updated content to reflect today’s changing realities. Here are tips to help you upgrade your template from my book with co-author Winston Tan, The Performance Appraisal Tool Kit: Redesigning Your Performance Review Template to Drive Individual and Organizational Change.
Reinventing the Traditional Performance Appraisal Grading Scale
The old grading methodology where "meets expectations" equates to something like a "C" earned in school needs to be replaced. Instead, avoid grade inflation and motivate staff members to equate a score of "3" (out of five grades) with a positive contribution for the year—the equivalent of playing par in golf. Your revised grading scale might look like this:
5—Distinguished Performance and Role Model Status: Clearly and consistently demonstrates extraordinary and exceptional accomplishment in all major areas of responsibility. Performed above and beyond expectations under exceptional circumstances during the review period. Others rarely equal performance of this caliber in similar roles. Generally, recognized as the Top 5% in this classification.
4—Superior/Highly Effective Performance: Performance is continually and consistently superior and regularly goes beyond what is expected. An exceptional contributor whose performance exceeds expectations on a consistent and sustainable basis. Generally, recognized as the Top 20% in this classification.
3—Fully Successful/Effective Performance: Performance consistently meets the critical requirements of the position, continually achieves preset goals, and performs with distinction. Incumbent performance is dependable and consistent in adding value to the work unit and demonstrates an ongoing healthy balance of performance and conduct that is infectious and motivates other team members to succeed.
2—Partially Successful Performance/Needs Improvement: Performance or conduct does not consistently meet or occasionally falls below what is required of the position; improvement in specific areas is required.
1—Unsuccessful/Unacceptable Performance: Performance fails to meet minimum expectations for this role, and immediate and sustained improvement is required.
This description of the "3" score introduces an element of pride and accomplishment. It recognizes that an individual "performed with distinction" throughout the review period, which reflects the organization's appreciation of the person's hard work and efforts. As such, it allows leaders to provide more realistic feedback and saves the 4 and 5 scores for those who are generally recognized as standouts among their peers, who performed under exceptional circumstances, or who are otherwise superstar contributors (i.e., the top 5 to 20 percent).
Redesigning the Template's Content
Traditionally, annual reviews focus on reaching minimal job performance thresholds and then grading upwards if someone has gone beyond the norm. Some organizations even use the basic job description as the foundation of the annual performance review template, which is a mistake because those documents have very different functions:
· Job descriptions define the core responsibilities, duties, and expectations for a specific role. They outline what a particular job entails and the minimum qualifications required to meet the essential functions of the position.
· Performance reviews are used to assess employees’ job performance over a specific time period. They evaluate how well employees are meeting the expectations outlined in their job descriptions and achieving their preassigned goals. They likewise measure conduct and behavior relative to teambuilding and creating a healthy workplace climate.
As such, they differ from job descriptions in focus, timing, and outcomes. Job descriptions help define roles, while performance reviews capture core elements of performance and conduct that speak to an individual’s historic contribution to the organization over that evaluation period as well as future goals surrounding professional development and special achievements. In short, job descriptions set the foundation, while performance reviews assess how well that foundation is being executed and built upon. Don’t mix up the two in terms of their purpose and focus, and don’t measure historical performance according to the minimum expectations established in job descriptions.
This refocused paradigm shift should describe outstanding performance and then grade downward if employees aren't reaching their full potential (rather than setting a low bar and grading upward if someone does more than the minimum). Set the bar in your performance appraisal template to truly effective performance, with those being rated above this level demonstrating exemplary contributions to the organization and team.
Examples of Truly Effective Performance and/or Conduct
Compare the heightened competency descriptors below to the descriptors that you're using in your current performance evaluation template. See if these enhanced descriptors will help you set your organization’s standards at a higher level:
Customer Service
For example, a traditional performance review descriptor for a customer service representative might sound like this:
Provides prompt, courteous, and professional customer communication. Provides timely and well-informed advice to customers. Demonstrates sufficient knowledge of company products and cross-selling skills to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction. Prioritizes workload based on customers' needs. Regularly adheres to scripts and selling tips. Skillfully overcomes customer objections. Consistently gains necessary authorizations and approvals for one-off exceptions to policy.
Ho-hum … With such a low level of performance expectation, it becomes easy for managers to award scores of 4 and 5. Likewise, workers can become resentful for receiving a score of 3—"meets expectations, which they equate as “average”—when the bar is set so low.
Now look at it another way:
Demonstrates total commitment to outstanding customer service. Provides knock-your-socks-off service that consistently exceeds client expectations. Regularly exhibits creativity and flexibility in resolving customer issues. Remains customer-oriented, flexible, and responsive to last-minute changes in plan. Regularly puts the human relationship above the transaction. Looks always to surprise customers with unanticipated benefits, including lower costs and shortened delivery time frames.
See the difference? These enhanced descriptors drive higher performance expectations, set the bar at a new level, and reflect performance at a much higher standard. If employees can honestly meet and exceed these heightened expectations, then they deserve a higher score of 4 or 5. Many will realize, however, that a score of 3 is more suitable relative to the heightened expectations outlined above.
The following examples of enhanced competency descriptors should be considered in the following areas. Again, compare them to your current performance review descriptors and see if tweaking or upgrading your current performance review language might help you raise the standards and expectations for performance, especially in terms of awarding appropriate scores:
Productivity and Efficiency
Sustains peak performance. Exhibits in-depth product knowledge and serves as a subject matter expert for others. Looks always to collaborate, organize, prioritize, simplify, and reinforce best practices. Regularly diagnoses problems that impede high performance and overcomes internal barriers to productivity. Manages successfully through frequent interruptions and remains focused when unexpected events challenge best-laid plans. Regularly completes work ahead of schedule and communicates proactively regarding potential roadblocks or delays. Readily assumes responsibility for things gone wrong, while sharing credit for things gone right.
Regulatory Quality, Efficiency, and Compliance
Establishes measurement tools and yardsticks for continuous process improvement and adjusts regularly to accommodate changing circumstances. Demonstrates best practices and finds an appropriate balance between quality and quantity. Plans resources and timelines effectively and gains appropriate budgetary signoff before committing to a deadline. Readily adheres to deadlines and production benchmarks. Regularly identifies streamlining measures that eliminate or reduce system redundancies. Strictly adheres to our program values of risk reduction, timely incident response, liability minimization, and loss control. Views quality as the single most essential element that allows our company to compete effectively and differentiate itself from the competition. Recognizes and assumes full responsibility for the obligation to disclose potential conflicts of interest.
Communication
Cultivates a culture of openness in information sharing. Regularly solicits constructive feedback, builds consensus, and asks well thought out and well-prepared questions. Encourages open communication, cooperation, and the sharing of knowledge. Remains open-minded and willing to entertain others’ ideas. Builds trust through regular, open, and honest communication. Demonstrates candor and level-headedness in all business dealings. Listens actively and always responds in a respectful tone. Engages appropriately when in disagreement and pushes back respectfully and in a spirit of good faith cooperation. Speaks persuasively and convincingly but is not afraid to say, “I don’t know” and then research an answer. Manages others’ expectations appropriately and proactively communicates any potential problems or roadblocks. Effectively feeds information upward and rarely leaves others flying blind or unaware of important updates.
Teamwork and Cooperation
Regularly looks for common ground and encourages collaboration among team members. Welcomes positive confrontation rather than sweeping things under the rug or looking the other way. Assumes good intentions until proven otherwise and always looks to bring out the best in others. Resolves interpersonal conflict without drama or angst. Builds consensus via shared decision making. Fosters a sense of shared accountability and group responsibility. Celebrates successes and recognizes and appreciates others’ contributions. Confronts problems head on but in a firm and constructive manner. Creates a work environment based on inclusiveness, welcoming others’ suggestions and points of view.
You get the idea. . . Enhancing the competency descriptors helps employees set goals to improve their performance. The descriptors themselves become teaching tools and targets to strive for. A typical developmental conversation might sound like this:
“Paul, in the communication category, I’ve awarded you a score of 3—Fully Successful. That’s great—it’s something to be proud of. And I awarded that score based on what I’ve written in the narrative section. Let me read that back to you out loud right now. [Read comment] So, very good work there as if you’re playing par at golf—what would be expected of a professional golfer at professional play.
“I’d like you to think about something, though. . . What do you feel you might be able to do to raise your overall contribution to a 4-level, “Superior or Highly Effective Performance” in the Communication category? What distinguishes a 4 from a 3 in the area of communication is the focus on building stronger consensus with other team members, proactively seeking constructive feedback, managing others’ expectations appropriately, and escalating matters effectively, when needed. Do you see any particular areas of your communication style that you can impact moving forward to gain that elite ‘Superior’ rating? Likewise, what can I do to help you get there?”
Moving the Middle of the Performance Bell Curve
A conversation like this can cover a particular competency like Communication in the example above. Likewise, you can discuss this idea of reaching the elite “Superior” rating for the Overall Score at the end of the review template as well. (Simply amend your sample language in the script above to focus on multiple core areas of performance and conduct rather than just one.)
Bell curves typically show that employee performance often falls into a general pattern like this:
· 20% Distinguished / Superior performance
· 70% Fully Successful performance
· 10% Partially Successful or Unsuccessful performance
On paper, it might look something like this:
It’s a back-of-the-napkin rubric (i.e., a scoring guide and evaluation tool) that helps you capture employee performance trends and helps you avoid grade inflation, a.k.a. awarding everyone on your team the highest score possible. True bell curves are typically only valid when you have measurable units in excess of 10,000, so you won’t have a true “bell curve,” at least statistically, if your company only has 200 employees, for example. Still, the paradigm of a bell curve can be helpful when assigning scores and incentivizing team members to excel by reaching that next rung up the ladder. Note that bell curves aren’t meant to “force” employees into a box of any sort upfront; instead, they are an after effect of what performance scores often look like after being issued. Still, the simple idea of a bell curve can be helpful in assessing talent and capturing appropriate scores at review time.
Further, an enhanced performance appraisal template like this can help you, as a manager, focus on “moving the middle” of the bell curve, which is where the greatest performance ROI (return on investment) often lies. How do you move your “Fully Successful” employees into the top 20% “Superior” category? How do you move a Superior performer (top 20%) into the Distinguished (top 5%) classification? Now that’s something worth striving for! It’s concrete, visible, and can help motivate your middle-of-the-road or better performers to take their contributions to the next level. It also helps you create your own professional goals as a leader and build muscle in the critical areas of talent management and development (i.e., "growing your own" talent bench).
A New Way Forward with Your Enhanced Performance Appraisal Template
While most managers and employees will likely say that their performance management program is blah at best, this attempt at reinventing the appraisal template is where you can begin to spike “performance management” in your organization by creating a “performance culture.” Set the bar high. Use the language to describe role-model performance and behavior. Help your employees develop goals to achieve the competency descriptors outlined. And employ this new approach to performance management to help you avoid grade inflation—a major shortcoming in most organizations’ performance appraisal programs.
Start small. Introduce the concepts of revised scoring and enhanced competency descriptors to your boss and department head. Then run the proposal past your company’s senior executive leadership team, including the CEO or business owner. Let them have a chance to review the language you’ve proposed and edit it so that it matches your organization’s policies and practices and captures the key areas where improvement is needed. Once you gain senior-level buy-in, you can then roll out the program to your operational, frontline leaders, again asking for their input and suggestions. (This way, everyone has skin in the game and assumes responsibility for the program’s success.)
By the time you roll out the revised performance appraisal template to your staff and line employees, you’ll have full management buy-in. You’ll be able to explain that these revised scores and competency descriptors are intended to help employees do their best work and strive to reach new ground, both in the organization’s best interests and for their own career and professional development.
Likewise, expect some healthy resistance and paranoia to set in at the outset: “The company is only doing this to lower our grades and pay out less in merit increases this year” or “They’re setting the standards impossibly high so that no one can achieve a score of 5 any longer.” Yes, that natural resistance is to be expected. But think of the managers who will become stronger talent leaders by employing this revised tool and becoming more disciplined in the talent management space. Think of the employees who will strive to reach that next rung on the ladder, moving from a 3 to a 4 or from a 4 to a 5. You’ll have made that all possible with the simple introduction of a revised and enhanced performance appraisal template.
Note that you might want to let your employees know explicitly that this new approach to performance management is not intended to lower merit increase payouts. The merit pool will remain the same for Year 1 of the program (although the scoring methodology will change). However, it will likely impact performance review payouts in the future as your organization strives to enrich and enforce its pay-for-performance culture. Then, once the first round of rollout is complete, employees can build and review quarterly goals around their enhanced professional development targets.
Again, by the numbers. . .
· First, draft the modifications to your performance appraisal template to help alleviate grade inflation challenges and spike employee engagement. (You should experience noticeably less inflated ratings company-wide that reflect individual performance much more accurately.)
· Second, gain appropriate approvals from your C-suite and senior executive leadership team, asking them for input and feedback along the way.
· Third, roll out training workshops for your frontline operational managers, empowering them to become better people leaders and build muscle around talent assessment and talent management. (This should help eliminate their fears of being straightforward and honest in their assessments, especially with underperformers.) While you’re at it, train on adopting a new approach to real-time constructive feedback and introducing quarterly reviews and check-ins where the employees (a) schedule time on their bosses’ calendars and (b) create the agendas for their meetings to discuss progress towards their goals, their career and professional development needs, and training or cross-functional opportunities to gain broader organizational or technical exposure.
· Fourth, conduct training workshops for all frontline operational staff employees who will be evaluated under this new program. Employees’ initial suspicion may very well turn into excitement once they realize that that they’ll be receiving performance feedback more regularly. (Remember, Gen Y and Gen Z recognize "career and professional development" as one of their top three or top five priorities in many published surveys.) Most will like the idea of scheduling time with their boss on a quarterly basis to discuss their recent achievements, goal attainment status, and career and professional development. And many will understand the organization’s goals in capturing productivity more accurately and helping people benefit from career development discussions meant to help them focus on doing their best work every day with peace of mind while gaining greater self-confidence in their area of expertise.
This revised performance management program will likely open the lines of communication across the organization in a very positive way. The program can then be realigned at the next stage to focus on team development, revenue growth, team collaboration and working across silos, and the like. It just naturally builds upon itself, both from suggestions from senior leaders and from the employees themselves. This can be a game changer in terms of organizational effectiveness because it’s built on individual and team accountability. It celebrates achievement and gives people room to grow professionally—even if your organization doesn’t have many opportunities for internal promotion and/or large merit increases or bonuses.
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For more information and additional samples and templates, please see my book, The Performance Appraisal Template: Redesigning Your Performance Review Template to Drive Individual and Organizational Change (AMACOM Books, imprint of the American Management Association). It likewise provides sample templates for organizations at the start-up, growth, and mature levels as well for specific employee populations, including senior executives, exempt/professional workers, and hourly/union employees. You can likewise rely on Paul Falcone Workplace Leadership Consulting, LLC, to assist you with redrafting your current performance appraisal template and rolling out training to senior executives, frontline operational managers and leaders, and staff members alike.
For more information on Paul's 17 books, please visit his #HarperCollinsLeadership author page at https://www.harpercollinsleadership.com/catalog/paul-falcone/
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