Why can't performance appraisal bring high performance
Release date: February 17, 215 Zhong Qingbo
Foreword: Once upon a time, performance appraisal was famous, and domestic enterprises hired consulting companies or worked hard in person to design performance appraisal. Bosses regard performance appraisal as a "panacea", overcome all difficulties and vigorously implement it. But times have changed, and now, the performance appraisal of many enterprises has gradually died down, becoming a mere formality or even stopped. The reason is that the performance appraisal was expected to eventually improve the performance of the enterprise, but after a period of time, it was found that the performance appraisal did not bring high performance or even make the performance worse. Performance appraisal is like a stone thrown into the water, which makes some ripples. The time is not long, the stone sinks to the bottom, and the water surface is calm again. What's wrong with performance appraisal? How to make performance appraisal play its due role? With the common concerns of these enterprises, we interviewed Ms. Chen Ming, a well-known human resources expert and general manager of Heyi Human Resources Management Consulting Company.
there is no management without assessment
q: first, let's go back to the source and explore why enterprises value performance assessment so much. What kind of magic and function does performance appraisal have?
a: according to Peter Drucker, a management master, "management must follow a principle: every job must be carried out to achieve the overall goal". Performance appraisal is to promote the development of personnel in the direction expected by the enterprise by decomposing the strategic objectives of the organization layer by layer and checking and evaluating the completion of the objectives, and finally realize the overall goal of the enterprise. Assessment is not the purpose, but the real purpose is to realize the strategic goal of the enterprise through assessment.
There is a famous saying in management that there is no management without assessment. Through the assessment, the performance of personnel is reasonably evaluated, so that talented people can stand out and those who have contributed can get reasonable returns. This will gradually form a corporate culture that rewards the excellent and punishes the bad, advocates performance and advocates implementation.
Through assessment, we can find out the reasons that hinder the achievement of enterprise goals, and recognize the shortcomings of the enterprise itself and the gap between personnel; By designing reasonable promotion and improvement methods, we can make up the gap and improve performance, so as to gain lasting competitive advantage for enterprises and realize sustainable development.
to sum up, performance appraisal can not only ensure the achievement of the core objectives of enterprises, but also give full incentives to personnel, thus achieving a win-win situation for enterprises and personnel. This is the reason why appraisal has become more and more popular in recent years, and many enterprises are flocking to it.
key links are missing, and the assessment efficiency can't be brought into play
Q: Since performance appraisal has such great magic, why do many enterprises report that the assessment has become a formality, and the expected results have not been achieved, and the assessment has not brought high performance? What is the reason?
a: there are many reasons for the formality of assessment. from the perspective of many enterprises I have contacted, the key reason is the vague or even wrong understanding of assessment, which leads to unscientific practices and disappointing results. In fact, a complete performance appraisal system should include four links: planning, process management, assessment scoring and performance improvement. However, in many enterprises, the concept of performance appraisal has been greatly reduced artificially, and performance appraisal only stays on planning and assessment scoring. Lack of process management and performance improvement. Performance appraisal has become a lame walk, thus causing the performance appraisal to fail to achieve the expected results.
At present, the assessment of many enterprises still stays at the stage of establishing tables at the beginning of the month and assessing at the end of the month. At the beginning of the month, all levels of enterprises are busy setting targets, and at the end of the month, they make vigorous assessments and deduct wages. After the assessment is completed, no one cares about the assessment anymore, no one analyzes the reasons for poor performance, and no one tracks and improves the assessment results. In the implementation stage of the process, no one cares about how to standardize personnel behavior and how to solve problems for personnel. Only when the examination is to be conducted again, do people fill out the forms in a hurry and get busy for a while. Usually, the examination has become something unrelated to work. Due to the lack of timely improvement and counseling, although such assessment work has been done a lot, it has not played a role in improving performance, corporate problems still exist, and performance is still standing still or even declining.
Lack of communication and guidance, the assessment is at the level of primary school students
Q: Is process management and performance improvement really so important that it determines the success or failure of the assessment? What role does the supervisor who performs these two functions play?
a: process management and performance improvement can really determine the success or failure of the assessment. I will explain it in detail here.
Pay attention to the results and ignore the process: thus, the assessment becomes a formality, and even contains a profound crisis. Nowadays, when evaluating the performance of many enterprises, they always tend to take the result as the primary factor, and the performance hero is also the object sought after by enterprises. But so many questions arise: by what means do people accomplish their goals? Do you try your best to overcome difficulties and obstacles to achieve your goals? Or go with the flow and follow the development of the market? Or at the expense of the long-term interests of the enterprise, did you get personal gain by drinking poison to quench your thirst?
here, let me give a small example to illustrate this problem. who should be rewarded if A has achieved the goal and B has not? There is no doubt that A should be rewarded and B should be punished. However, the conclusion will be completely different after careful analysis: A is in a high-speed growth area, and he achieved his goal with no effort. In fact, his competitors grew much faster than him. However, the market of B tends to be saturated, and the competition is highly fierce. Through intensive cultivation of the market, enhanced service to dealers and effective promotion, B has avoided the continuous decline in sales, while the sales of competitors have fallen sharply. In this way, it is B who should be rewarded instead of A, but the personnel are right, but we are wrong.
Paying attention to the results while ignoring the process will easily lead to only looking at the superficial phenomenon, leading to the wrong reward behavior, and the wrong reward will send the wrong signal to the personnel, resulting in? The behavior of quick success and instant benefit. People only look at the present, not the future, and no one cares about some work that affects the sustainable development of enterprises. In this way, the benefits of enterprises have gone up in a short time, but the long-term benefits of enterprises may be damaged. For example, the common reasons why some enterprises have big twists and turns are: in order to quickly increase their income, business personnel blindly distribute goods to dealers and take the quantity at low prices; In this way, although the sales in a short time are great and everyone is happy, in the end, the profit of the enterprise is very low or even a loss.
Only assessment and scoring, but no performance improvement: during the performance appraisal, the personnel failed to complete the task. What is the reason? Internal or external factors, organizational factors or personal factors, lack of knowledge, poor skills or attitude problems. These all need careful analysis. Through interviews, we will quickly find out the real reasons for the good and bad performance of personnel and help them recognize their shortcomings. At the same time, we will also find corporate and external problems that affect the performance completion. The supervisor gives appropriate improvement and promotion methods according to the shortage of subordinates, helps subordinates to remove external obstacles, and strengthens counseling for the shortage of personnel in daily life, so that the skills of personnel can be improved quickly and the performance will be completed quickly and well. At the same time, the mastery of people's skills and the improvement of performance have enhanced people's confidence and enthusiasm in work, which has further improved their performance in the future, and the performance of enterprises has shown a virtuous circle.
However, many enterprises have just failed to do these valuable tasks, which affect the lasting performance of personnel and enterprises. Many executives of enterprises are afraid of trouble and don't want to talk to their subordinates face to face, or the interview is just a perfunctory formality. Why the personnel performance is not up to standard, what is the real problem, what is not done enough, what are the difficulties, and what are their thoughts? These are all ignorant. On the other hand, the lack of guidance and improvement, the lack of corresponding solutions to personnel problems, can not help people with backward performance to complete their tasks and avoid the risk of punishment, which leads to the emergence of problems again and again and simple mistakes. Such an assessment will cause great dissatisfaction among personnel. The performance and skills of personnel are spinning in the same place, and the demands are ignored, which also leads to the decline of personnel confidence, resulting in the worse the assessment. As a matter of fact, primary school students can only assess and score, and make summary of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. But unfortunately, the assessment of many enterprises is still at the level of primary school students.
the role orientation of the supervisor's mistake: the above problems in the assessment have a great relationship with the supervisor. Managers of many enterprises just stay at the level of doing things, busy doing their own things every day, simply giving orders and checking the work of subordinates, and not really taking on the role that supervisors should assume. Many supervisors don't think it is their duty to coach subordinates and help them grow. In enterprises, we often see that many executives are strong in their own business, but their subordinates' performance is a mess. At this time, they often think that their subordinates are incompetent, not that there is something wrong with their management methods. Of course, without the guidance of subordinates, the supervisor also tasted the bitter fruit of self-brewing. When the subordinate's work often goes wrong, the supervisor can only be busy putting out the fire every day, but the real core and valuable work is not done, which leads to the failure to complete his goals and the failure to add value to the enterprise's performance.
In addition, although some supervisors have a clear understanding of their roles, they lack relevant management knowledge and counseling skills, and they are unable to analyze the performance problems of their subordinates and help them out of trouble. In fact, it is difficult to make a forest out of a single tree, and the supervisor with high team performance is a competent supervisor. The supervisor is not only responsible for his own performance, but also for the performance of his subordinates. As a bridge connecting the preceding with the following, whether the supervisor is competent or not and whether he knows his role clearly directly determines the success or failure of the assessment, which is also a shortcoming that many enterprises urgently need to improve in the assessment. Otherwise, no matter how good the performance appraisal is, it may be misunderstood by incompetent supervisors.
Without strategy and management, the assessment has lost its roots
Q: Many enterprises have also achieved assessment counseling and improved their performance, and their supervisors are competent and do a good job, but why are there still problems in the assessment of enterprises? What is going on?
a: these problems you mentioned exist, which are mainly caused by enterprise strategy and position analysis.
strategy: why is it clear when the source is unclear? The work is well done, the supervisor is competent, and the performance of the enterprise has not improved much. This is not a question of assessment. It is necessary to review whether there is a problem with the strategy. If the strategy is wrong, the more you do, the more mistakes you will make. At this time, the role of the perfect assessment system is limited.
At present, the strategies of many enterprises are vague, and some strategies are just slogans, such as hitting the top 5 and marching into the top three, without supporting measures. Unclear strategy leads to unclear objectives and unclear assessment results. For example, many enterprises have innovative strategies, but they are only reflected in the indicators of R&D department, and the production department has no corresponding indicators, so sales are still sales. In this way, enterprises shout for innovation, and everyone is busy, and the innovation strategy can't be realized.
Many corporate strategies are often hidden in the boss's mind, and many people don't understand them. In this way, people just take daily work as the goal, and the goal and strategy form two skins. In this way, although people work hard, they just do things right, but they don't do things right. If the finance department has financial security indicators, in order to complete this indicator, credit control measures will be taken, but this is contrary to the company's strategy of maintaining major customers, resulting in the loss of major customers.
position analysis cannot support the foundation of an enterprise: position analysis is the foundation of human resource management. Many enterprises have not done a good job analysis, unclear responsibilities, overlapping and even mutual constraints, which will also lead to loopholes in the assessment. Because we don't know which responsibilities of personnel can create value and which indicators can bring benefits to the company, the assessment lacks pertinence, or Deloitte has all kinds of performance, or only one or two indicators are assessed, resulting in the overall imbalance of the enterprise. If the indicators of production personnel pay too much attention to the output, the output will go up, but the quality will go down.
in fact, only by finding the goal from the core responsibilities of the position and grasping the key output of the position can the performance of the enterprise be truly promoted, which is more strongly reflected in the functional departments. Many functional departments fail to grasp the key output of the position, and only assess the behavior aspects such as ability and attitude, and some trivial things that are directly seen by the eyes, which causes the real core work of functional departments to be not done well and has a bad impact on enterprise performance.
assessment: systematic thinking, closed-loop design
q: from your analysis, performance assessment needs many factors to play a role. so, what can performance assessment do to really bring high performance to enterprises?
A: There are many factors that need to be paid attention to in order to make the assessment bring high performance. As far as the common problems in the above enterprises are concerned, I will only talk about the points that need the most attention and are often ignored by enterprises: systematic thinking, closed-loop design, and must improve the skills of supervisors.
systematic thinking: from the design point of view, the problems in assessment are not single, but involve all aspects of the enterprise, and the former cause may be the latter result. Therefore, it must be solved with a global vision and systematic thinking. A scientific performance system can not be separated from a clear development strategy, a clear job analysis, and an incentive salary design, all of which are closely linked and indispensable, and * * * supports a complete assessment system. Therefore, when designing performance appraisal, these related links should be considered and designed together to ensure coordination and unity. Otherwise, simply talking about the assessment will lead to the dilemma of treating the head as a headache, treating the foot as a pain, and pressing the gourd to get up. Unclear strategy leads to the opposite of the original design intention. Without job analysis and assessment, there is no pertinence, and without incentives, there is no enthusiasm for personnel to participate. Such an assessment system can only end in failure.
Closed-loop design: The so-called closed-loop design means that all work has a beginning and an end, and there must be links such as implementation, inspection, control and promotion. Therefore, from the operational level of performance appraisal, it is necessary to change the concept and practice of one-dimensional thinking, from simply paying attention to the result scoring to all-round thinking to solve problems, including goal setting, process management, assessment scoring and performance improvement. Moreover, through system design and training publicity, people realize that performance management runs through every day of managers and personnel, not just those days of assessment. From the setting of performance goals to the final performance improvement, supervisors and personnel should maintain continuous communication. Moreover, performance appraisal, finding and solving problems is more important than simply scoring, and the correct implementation process is more important than simple results. Performance appraisal should not only assess the past, but also develop the future.
supervisor promotion: every soldier will bear a lion's share, and the supervisor is the shortcoming of the whole assessment work of the enterprise. If the supervisor is incompetent in the assessment, the performance assessment will not create performance at all. Here, I want to emphasize it.
Role orientation: The management master once said: "Supervising, evaluating and guiding subordinates is one of the most important responsibilities of managers". Therefore, in the whole assessment process, the supervisor should bear the main responsibility, and process guidance and performance improvement are the unshirkable core responsibilities of the supervisor, and these tasks should never be pushed to the human resources department. Supervisors should learn to change their roles, from supervisors and managers to coaches and tutors of personnel.
performance-linked: not only should the supervisor know his role clearly, but he should also attach great importance to it. The performance appraisal, especially the personnel coaching and performance improvement, should be regarded as the important target of the supervisor's appraisal, so that the supervisor will be punished if the personnel's performance is not good. In this way, personnel counseling will become a habit of the supervisor.
skills training: in addition to