STUDY : Drift away from performance reviews backfires

Performance reviews are universally unpopular with employees and managers because they can be confronting, awkward and overly bureaucratic.

But new research and leading Australian academics suggest that ditching them entirely may be misguided.

Video : Are performance reviews useful?

Herbert Smith Freehills HR Manager Andrea Bell and Business Development Manager of Clients and Sectors, Chele Dore talk about the use of performance reviews.

Deloitte, Adobe and Accenture are among big companies who have dumped performance reviews.

A new study now suggests that in getting rid of performance appraisals, some companies may have also stopped having valuable conversations with their staff, who are becoming less engaged as a result.

Herbert Smith Freehills HR Manager Andrea Bell and colleague Chele Dore. Photo: Christopher Pearce

Aaron McEwan, from best practice company CEB, said its survey of 9500 employees and 300 heads of human resources managers found employees, particularly high performers, had become disengaged without performance reviews.

The study of staff and managers at global companies, including those operating in Australia, found the move away from performance ratings had resulted in a 28 per cent drop in the productivity of high performers. Recognition and feedback were found to be important in encouraging high performance.

While managers who no longer conducted performance reviews were under less pressure, they also found they were not as closely connected to their staff after abandoning the annual performance appraisal. 

The study found perceptions of the quality of conversations with managers fell by 14 per cent after reviews were abandoned. Employee performance was generally 10 per cent lower in organisations without performance reviews.

"The basis on which most organisations removed rankings was a belief that the rankings got in the way of quality conversations," Mr McEwan said. "There was an assumption that if you removed the ratings what would happen is that engagement would go up because you have removed something that employees don't particularly like.
"What we found statistically overall, was the organisations that removed their ratings ended up with 10 per cent lower performance. Your high performers were least satisfied at the end of the day."

Professor of Human Resource Management Carol Kulik, from the University of South Australia business school, said surveys had shown performance appraisals were universally unpopular.

"We know that performance appraisal out of all HR activities it's one of the ones that gets the worst evaluation from both employees and managers," she said.

"Surveys show that 95 per cent of managers think their performance management systems suck and 75 per cent of employees say they don't get good performance feedback.
"So nobody thinks it is done very well." 

John Shields, professor of Human Resource Management and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney business school, said companies that had simply abandoned performance reviews instead of finding a way to improve them, had "thrown out the baby with the bathwater".

"No one has been able to offer what I regard as a viable or sustainable alternative," he said.
"Now that doesn't mean I am a supporter of the annual ritual of performance appraisals. I am not saying that we should insist on top-down, bureaucratic forensically-defined appraisal systems because they can be organisational death as well.
"It is a matter of degree."

Performance management measured against clearly described performance standards and expectations relevant to an individual role could be helpful and was also a requirement under Australian employment law.

Andrea Bell, human resources director for the law firm, Herbert Smith Freehills, said performance reviews were important, particularly for high performers. "For us the focus is on performance conversations," she said. "I think the conversations that we are focused on having ... are about helping people understand their strengths, look for development areas, get clear about what the coming year or future performance should look like."

Freehills removed school report card style ratings from performance reviews about 13 years ago because they got in the way of a productive conversation. "That improved engagement and improved performance," she said.  "If you are not going to have ratings you have to be really careful that you are having high quality conversations and that's where we put our effort."
Source

Is Your Workplace Full Of Corporate Bullies?

Published: FORBES.COM , 5 January 2016 @ 05:03PM
Writer: Dan Pontefract

I remember a period in my life as a 10 year-old when one of the neighborhood boys was being a bully. He was four years older than me—roughly 20 pounds heavier and four inches taller—and for a few months seemed to amuse himself by picking on me any chance he could get. If there was a road hockey game being played on the street with the neighborhood children, he’d purposely check me hard into the ground chuckling to himself afterward. The game was supposed to be contact free.  Wayne Gretzky he wasn’t.

One day during a game of hide and seek, he snuck up behind me and shoved dirty, wet leaves in my face. Shenanigans continued like this until one day I snapped. While playing with him and a few other kids in our backyard, unprovoked, I calmly walked up to him and said, “You’ve had this coming for a while now” and proceeded to punch him square in the nose. I was channeling the pent up frustration and anger of the previous weeks into an almighty wallop. It was the first, and to this day, the last time I ever hit anyone. It felt good, too.

Similar experiences to my encounter with the neighborhood bully seem to be cropping up in today’s workplace. According to Dr. Carroll M. Brodsky in The Harassed Worker, workplace bullying refers to “repeated and persistent attempts by one person to torment, wear down, frustrate or get a reaction from another. It is treatment which persistently provokes, pressures, frightens, intimidates or otherwise discomforts another person.” It sounds a lot like my former neighbor.

Researchers published an influential paper titled “Metaphors of Workplace Bullying: Nightmares, Demons, and Slaves” where they surfaced further ammunition to our already loaded gun of workplace bullying as a cause to employee disengagement. In it the authors note:

"Based on qualitative data gathered from focus groups, narrative interviews, and target drawings, the analysis describes how bullying can feel like a battle, water torture, nightmare, or noxious substance. Abused workers frame bullies as narcissistic dictators, two-faced actors, and devil figures. Employees targeted with workplace bullying liken themselves to vulnerable children, slaves, prisoners, animals, and heartbroken lovers."

This sounds even worse than my former neighbor.

In the January-February 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review, authors Christine Porath and Christine Pearson published data on the topic of workplace bullying or as they elegantly define it: “workplace incivility.” Through research and the collection of data points—after polling thousands of employees concerning the manner in which they are treated at work—Porath and Pearson found 98% of employees at some point in their working life were a victim of uncivil behavior while on the job. More distressing is that over a thirteen-year period between 1998 and 2011, the percentage of workers who reported being treated rudely at least once a week while at work rose from 25% to 50%. It’s not quite like my childhood bullying example, but a lack of civility in your place of work is the modern-day adult equivalent.

What happens to workers who are impacted by bullies and incivility in the workplace? Much like the bottom-line consequences of a disengaged organization—where disengaged and not engaged employees hamper profitability and customer satisfaction—there are performance and productivity related issues.

As a leader, you no doubt see the financial implications to such a predicament. Those factors uncovered by researchers include:

•   47% intentionally decreased the time spent at work
•   80% lost work time worrying about the incident
•   66% said their performance declined
•   78% said their commitment to the organization declined
•   25% admitted to taking their frustration out on customers

What’s the bottom line?

Workplace bullies are not only causing employees to be disengaged, they are creating performance and productivity related issues that are likely causing harm to one’s career development. What occurs when an employee feels threatened at work? It accentuates the negative aspects of the organization and does nothing to help the employee see the positives of the role or situation. As a leader, you might want to observe and pay attention to the bullies in your organization. Those bullies may be part of the reason employees are disillusioned with their prospects of finding meaning or purpose in their place of work.

That stated, leaders are capable (and culpable) of bullying as well. To me, bullying is simply another term for “command and control” when that method of leadership is employed by the leader. Leaders who believe it’s their managerial right to flash the “I have a more senior title than you” card to ensure a decision goes in their favor or who aim to demonstrate to a larger audience that they are “the boss” are, in fact, another version of corporate incivility.

For example, a few years ago, two different members of a team separately approached me one week, asking for help. Their boss had decided to publicly berate both of them at different points during an all-hands team meeting. There were roughly 50 people in the meeting. The individuals were humiliated. One cried uncontrollably to me over the phone as he/she wondered aloud why the verbal lashing was necessary in the first place. In fact, this particular person felt as though the negative feedback was completely unfounded. The other wanted to take vengeance with some form of a smear campaign.

In this case, and many more, a formal complaint sent into the HR department (or the Workplace Discrimination Officer, if there is such a bureau in one’s place of work) is the first course of action, and one I suggested. Leaders who ridicule or admonish employees in open meetings—whether on a conference call or face-to-face—are no different than my old neighbor. They’re a disgrace, and should be reported. (I don’t advise the knuckle sandwich approach of my youth to combat your corporate bully problem.)

Leaders who poach internal employees from another team—without being proactive and discussing the opportunity or situation in advance—are another type of corporate bully. It’s a form of peer-to-peer bullying, as often the individual thinks he/she can use pure, unadulterated force to get what they want to build their own team.

Leaders who make impossible demands on deadlines, who set up their staff for inevitable failure, and who take credit for the positive results an individual or team created without said leader’s involvement, are also facsimiles of corporate bullies.

Leaders who cancel a meeting at the last minute, never to reschedule again, are inflicting another form of hierarchical bullying. We might call this calendar bullying.

If any of the examples mentioned ring a bell, perhaps it is time to come face to face with the possibility you (or your leader) may possess characteristics of workplace incivility, if not bullying outright. Unfortunately, this is leading to the potential for workplace dissatisfaction. It most certainly is not paving a way towards a purposeful and engaged mindset for many employees at work.

Workplace incivility and corporate bullies can be a problem. If you are in such a scenario, it just may be time to turn inaction into action.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danpontefract/2016/01/05/is-your-workplace-full-of-corporate-bullies/#2fffe8e77aa1