Solving the Unfair Evaluation Dilemma

Each year millions of employees are evaluated. Unfortunately, employee evaluations tend to be subjective — there’s often no data to support the manager’s opinions. This leads to reduced morale, elevated employee turnover rates, and a general lack of trust in management.

There are four types of reviews: the fair positive, the unfair positive, the fair negative, and the unfair negative.

Most relationships can handle A, B, and C.

The destructive review is “D”, the “unfair negative”. This is when an employee receives a negative review that he/she truly believes is unfair. It doesn’t actually matter whether the review is accurate. If the employee believes the review is unfair, it’s a category D review.

As managers, we must avoid giving category D reviews. Our job as managers is to remove obstacles and barriers and help our teams achieve success (productive work). Our success as managers is measured by their success (they’re the people actually doing the work). Category D reviews are destructive to productivity. They’re distracting and painful for employees. What’s bad for employees is bad for managers.

Negative evaluations don’t have to be “unfair”. Negative evaluations can be backed by data. When you give an evaluation (positive or negative) that’s backed by data, you gain your employee’s trust. You’re elevating the discussion, focusing on improving future performance rather than debating past performance.

If you’re in an organization that does reviews without data, you may be thinking, “Sure, it would be nice to have data when I do reviews, but we don’t collect data on employee performance. How would we even begin to do that?”

Collecting data sounds daunting, but if you’re using a tool like Pip, you get the data “for free” just by asking your employees to use Pip to define and track their processes. From the employees’ perspective, Pip is a productivity tool that helps them remember what to do. From the manager’s perspective, Pip is a way to make sure the most important things are getting done.

As an example, let’s take a look at one of Steve’s daily duties at Penguin Magic. Steve is responsible for checking the mailbox for money orders. This is something he’s supposed to do every day he works. Steve set this up as a process in Pip. We can click the 365 day view and see that Steve is “green” on this process 71% of the time. Not bad. Or maybe it is bad. It’s up to Steve’s manager to set the standard. But at least they have the data.

Pip allows you to systematically record key elements of each individual’s job duties over the course of the entire year.

Let’s look at another example. Another one of Steve’s job responsibilities is to film a “thank you” Orderv each day. This is a custom “thank you” video that goes out to customers who placed an order that day. We can click the 365 view in Pip and see that since this process was put in place, Steve has been “green” 82% of the time. Great job!

When you have the data, the conversation is completely different. Instead of accusing the employee of making a mistake, you can focus on getting to the bottom of problems.

“I see you’ve been red on this process a bit more lately. Is everything ok? Do we need to make some changes to free up more time for you?”

For more information about Pip, visit http://www.processinplace.com