How can an organisation overcome perception driven feedback problem?

Dear Seniors, I have been a regular reader of almost all the posts of citehr.com.

I was reading a post by some senior on performance appraisal, and a concern clicked me regarding the appraisal feedback process.

I have worked with various industries, I have found a similar trend almost everywhere that an informal grapevine plays a very strong role in affecting appraisal of an employee. People talk about issues or behavior being faced with the appraisee but no one discusses with the person being affected due to this.

I had started a feedback exercise but felt that most of superiors, even seniors, fail to put across feedback to an employee in a correct manner, no matter with or without data points. This eventually leads to attrition as it gets very difficult for a person to justify his capability when everyone around closes their ears. To be precise, we have found a sales person was not being able to perform due to her personal problems at home, when she started showing a sign of growth it was linked to market improvement than her effort to get the job done.

How can an organisation overcome such perception driven feedback problem.

Will look forward for suggestion.

Best regards

Kriti

Kriti,

You have raised a valid point here. I completely agree to the fact that the feedback can be biased thus putting a dent on the whole appraisal system. Here is the thing we must put into consideration, the appraisal system never takes into account the feedback of only one person towards other. It is in fact a culmination of overall assessment of a given candidate as judged by a) tangible/intangible results achieved by the subject b) perspective association of the subject with given analytic.

As far as the feedback received for the sales person is concerned, it is entirely onto the HR to sort it out. If you think that the credit of her hard-work is being overshadowed by the trivial reason of improvement in market scenario, you need to refine your feedback system and add a point which judges a candidate on the basis of two different lapses of market.

Moreover, you can always propose to change the format of feedback system. For smaller organisations, I always insist that the feedback forms should never bear open ended questions but forced choice methods with justifications thereof.

Dear Kriti,

If the proper Performance Management System (PMS) is not well-defined, if it is well-defined but not well instituted then the problems of this kind arise. I have written in scores of past posts that PMS is not child's play. Defining measures of performance is very serious business.

When HR professionals, spend few years in their profession, they start considering that they have mastered all facets of HR. This forum is replete with posts by few seniors. At times I have intervened and debunked their myths. However, forever I cannot doing this.

In today's world perceptions have no role to play. Nevertheless, at many places, organisation's leadership also is at fault. Because of their financial muscle power, they try to muzzle their subordinates. In return they get surrounded by the flunkies. This is where performance replaces perception.

Thanks,

[SIZE=2]Dinesh V Divekar

Hello Kriti,
Try Face-to-face appraisal system, preferably with a requirement that both the reviewer and the employee must sign the form at the end. May be the reviewer can have an option to add a few comments confidentially later.
It is one of the PMS that can work better. I have tried it & felt it has good points. Only thing is, things will be horribly difficult for first 2/3 years, when you implement the procedure in an unionized shop-floor atmosphere.
Cheers,
Ganesh