by Eddie Vegger

Created on: December 28, 2008

Employee performance reviews have a bad name not because they are intrinsically bad, but because they are often administered so poorly.

The fault lies on both side of the review table. Employees who are completely passive about the process abdicate their responsibility. Most companies and organizations have some mechanism in place for employees to be active participants in the process. I'm a federal employee and a union member. The contract allows employees to attach comments to both their performance standards and to the completed evaluations. The contract also provides a process for employees to protest the performance rating they are given to the District Director, who can upgrade the rating if the employee presents a compelling argument. If an employee has taken all the actions described above and is still not satisfied with their rating, they can file a grievance with the union steward, and this gets them an audience with the Director of the entire agency. If it is not resolved at this level, then it goes to an outside arbitrator who may rule on behalf of the employee or the management, and the arbitrator's decision is binding. While this process may seem cumbersome, it works remarkably well. Nine times out of ten, employees and managers work things out without it ever getting to the grievance process. What surprises me is how few of the employees I work with ever take advantage of the rights afforded to them by the union contract. When these same employees whine about their performance appraisals, i have a hard time paying attention to it.

Supervisors and managers deserve equal measures of blame for the failure of performance reviews. First, performance reviews can only be as good as the standards they are created from. if performance measures are all completely subjective, employees don't have a clear picture of how they are to exceed those standards. Having a standard for "teamwork" is fine, but if all of the standards are similarly vague, the review at the end of the year will be just as obtuse. At least some of the standards that employees are evaluated upon should be measurable and directly tied to the success of the organization. For instance, if you are a counselor at a school, one of your objectives might be the graduation rate of the students assigned to your caseload. For standards such as these to be meaningful, they must be obtainable. If you set the standard I just described at 85% and historically, less than 70% of students graduate from the

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