What is the best way to improve staff performance?
There is an awful lot of performance management “best practice” out there. Lots of books, seminars, HR gurus and management consultants who tell you what to do and sell you a model.
But which practice is the best practice?
In 2002 the corporate leadership council decided to find out. It isn’t a hugely original question. Lots of people are interested in productivity. But the corporate leadership council applied a little more vigour than most.
First they defined “performance”
As anybody who has ever had (or conducted) a performance appraisal knows, measuring performance is fraught with challenges. The CLC defined performance as an individual’s annual performance management rating and used that as their ruler.
When I read that I was tempted to take the results with a big pinch of salt. Have you ever met anybody who agrees with their boss’s view of their performance? However, the CLC surveyed 19,000 managers and employees in 34 organisations. Quantity has a quality all of its own and there is a lot of truth in the adage that perception is reality, so I think this method made a reasonable yard stick.
Next they found out what improved it
They collated a list of all the theories and approaches they could think of; listing everything they could find in the management literature and asking the opinion of a plethora of senior H.R. executives. They collected 106 different factors that were claimed to improve performance.
Then they sent out a questionnaire to all 19,000, people asking many and varied questions:
- How is feedback delivered, face to face or in writing?
- Did you work with a mentor?
- Does your boss hold you accountable?
- How many formal reviews do you have a year?
The questionnaire went on a bit, there were 200 questions in total.
Finally the compiled the results
They grouped the 106 factors into 7 different categories:
- Performance management system
- Culture
- Manager employee interaction
- Formal performance review
- Informal feedback
- Day to day work
- Job opportunities
Then they ran a bunch of statistics and produced a report that showed what worked and what didn’t.
What did they find out?
A whole host of interesting things.
Here are a couple I have banged on about for a while:
- Rank stacking doesn’t improve performance
- Employees who enjoy their work do better
- Allowing risk taking is a good thing
- A boss who keeps changing their mind is a bad thing
One question caught my eye:
When conducting a performance appraisal, where should the emphasis of the discussion be?
The answer looked like this:
According to 19,000 people, managers who focus on employees “opportunities for development” make things worse.
All they do is convince the employee that they are in the wrong job and demotivate them. Consequently they put in less effort and their performance goes down.
If however the conversation is about what went well, the employee will walk away far happier and will put a lot more effort into the job in hand.
A beautiful example of the Pygmalion effect at work
I liked this report
Despite my reservations about the way they measured performance…
But there is a big danger that I only liked it because I agreed with it. If I hadn’t I may well have ignored it. I am as guilty of a little conformation bias as the next man.
So don’t take my word for it, download the report here and make your own mind up. Just be warned it is 117 pages long.
Whether you agree with the report or not, it does make one point beautifully.
There is plenty of “performance management best practice” out there, and remarkably little evidence to support it.
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HI James… totally agree with your stance on this. If you are interested in exploring a creative alternative, take a look at http://www.bigfiveperformance.com. Let me know if you would like to discuss it. Thanks.
I’m with you. I think I might have stopped reading the report after that definition. Despite that, did it change your opinion of the performance review? There’s a lot of talk about doing away with it. Should we keep it or get rid of it?
Good read! We all want our employees to be committed on their work, to be aligned in the goals of the organization. Keeping track of employees’ performance is just one task that management regularly do so to make sure that employees contribute in reaching the organization’s goal. And a good performance management could actually cause employees to be more engaged in their work.