Every company rates its employees whether they admit it or not. When a company pays some employees more than others it is rating them. If one employee gets a job assignment or promotion that others wanted but did not get, then these employees have been rated.
Manager ratings of performance can be valuable
Eliminating manager ratings makes sense for some companies. But companies don’t have to remove manager ratings to have a good performance management process.
Manager ratings can be valuable if collected as part of an appropriately designed performance management process. But for some companies collecting manager ratings creates more problems than it solves.
The following are three (3) ways companies have eliminated manager ratings yet retained the ability to accurately measure, identify, and reward employee performance.
- Shift ratings from the employee assessment to manager calibration sessions.
- Evaluate employees entirely based on goal accomplishment.
- Rate employees based on future actions instead of past performance.
It’s time for change, but make sure it’s the right change
It is critical to think through the implications that will result lest you find yourself in the following situation
The challenge of performance management is effectively dealing with the reality that all employees are valuable but some employees are more valuable than others. This requires making ratings in a manner that accurately assesses people’s performance without damaging employee-manager relationships or making employees feel like they’ve been divided up into winners and losers.
Removing manager ratings may be part of this answer for some companies, But, success is usually more about what you create rather than what you eliminate
-Dr. Steven Hunt
(Source: www.eremedia.com)