In recent days, whenever I see a large number of forms to evaluate the performance of enterprises, constantly introduce new target decomposition methods, or the flood of data in consulting reports, my mind is always haunted by a huge spider web full of data. I said to myself, "the day when you collapse for performance appraisal is not far away."
Believe me, I'm not the only one on the verge of collapse. In the matter of performance, the bookshelves of business schools are full of tools, ideas and cases, and many human resources departments and front-line managers are working hard to sow forms and harvest data. But to be fair, how many people like to play with this set of things? Professor Jeffery Pfeffer of Stanford University in the United States cited two examples: some Silicon Valley companies bought tight basketball tickets as rewards for managers who completed employee assessment on time, and when David Russo, former HR boss of SAS, burned the form of year-end assessment, employees cheered and peers rushed to tell them. The styles of our enterprises in China may be slightly different, but it is a fact that managers and managed people generally dislike performance appraisal.
Not waiting for performance appraisal doesn't mean not waiting for performance management, especially executives, who are keen to discuss this topic. Performance management, like a rose with thorns, or fried stinky tofu, makes people love and hate. The concept of performance management is broader than performance evaluation. Besides evaluation, the most important thing is communication and feedback. At present, managers generally pay attention to planning and assessment issues such as "reasonable decomposition of objectives", "accurate quantification of KPI", "solving the unfairness of assessment systems in different departments" and "linking salary with assessment results", while ignoring the feedback and communication of performance. In fact, my "spider web" illusion is not unreasonable, because the essence of performance management system should be a big network, but not a data network, but a communication network. Performance management system is essentially a communication system.
Performance management nets the contractual relationship of employment. According to the roles determined by the organizational division of labor, performance is the responsibility of each organization member. Performance and salary are mutual commitments between employees and organizational contracts. This kind of commitment is not only economic, but also psychological, which needs constant communication to maintain. Performance management is the expectation that organizations show at different levels to achieve their goals, and this expectation can only be implemented in behavior through communication and feedback. Evaluation data is helpful to communication, but it cannot replace communication.
From this point of view, the common problems in performance management are actually communication problems: "reasonable goal decomposition" is to split the organization's big expectations into small portable expectations for teams or individuals, which is easy to understand: "accurate quantification of KPI" is to digitally express the organization's expectations and unify the language; Absolute fairness between different departments? In my opinion, it will never be achieved, and the contradiction can only be alleviated by changing the expectations of employees through communication; And "the connection between salary incentive and assessment results" is the key word for enterprises to communicate their expectations and fulfill their promises. In this respect, slurred speech will make employees doubt the whole employment contract.
The network of performance management system carries not only contracts and commitments, but also power. For example, "Who will judge me" conveys to employees who is "important", "unimportant" or "least important" in the organization? And "evaluating whether information will come from subordinates and colleagues" will affect the power perception among members of the organization. When the feedback comes from different directions, not just top-down channels, the power in the organization will be relatively dispersed and the information transmission will be smoother.
In addition, the way enterprises use performance appraisal information directly conveys their attitude towards employee development. If we just collect assessment information and simply tell employees how much salary fluctuates, that is to tell everyone to pay attention to the so-called fairness of the previous behavior and scoring system, and employees' attention will focus on topics such as "why I am so different from him" and "how to score this score". If the enterprise tries to combine the assessment information with the detailed behavior feedback of employees, encourage correct behavior and correct deviation, it can guide employees to pay attention to behavior improvement. If the feedback information is further used for team skill combination and personal career development, it really encourages everyone to "look forward". In this way, a development-oriented benign interaction has been formed, and both the rater and the graded are relieved.
Performance management is alive and the source of vitality is constant feedback and communication. Semi-annual performance feedback is a pile of dust. Examination data can often be used as a wheel for communication and feedback, but the living can't let the data stick on the Internet. No matter how reasonable the goal setting seems and how accurate the KPI is, if the enterprise makes performance management a network of data and quantification, rather than a contract network of communication and feedback, the days that make people collapse even more are yet to come. Why not learn from David Russo of the United States or Sun Walker of China and burn this silk hole?