Tips & Guidelines for Giving Effective Employee Feedback

Giving feedback to others in your workplace may seem like a tricky task, but becoming adept at offering both praise and constructive criticism doesn’t have to remain a pain point for you and your employees. Delivering constructive criticism isn’t always comfortable, but it is part of the responsibilities involved in people management, meaning it is unavoidable no matter how difficult it may seem. 

One of the key objectives for any business leader is to yield the most productivity as possible from employees, and this can only be done when those employees are receiving feedback on their work efforts in a timely and helpful manner. The problem is, many leaders today have never received the proper training necessary in giving constructive and helpful feedback, and are thus much more reluctant to deliver any sort of feedback. The key is to recognize feedback not as a negative, but rather an opportunity to provide your employees with the necessary information they need to adjust their performance and improve wherever necessary. 

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Tips for Giving Feedback 

Feedback should be designed to be constructive, not corrosive. In order to provide feedback to your employees in a constructive manner that encourages them to improve, consider the following tips and guidelines:

Use a Professional Tone 

Not all employee slip ups will keep you calm and collected, and while a team member’s carelessness or poor judgment may cause you to get upset, delivering that feedback when angry will do nothing to remedy the situation. Before giving feedback, ensure your temper is in check and that you are calm enough to deliver it in a careful and measured way. Employees are much less likely to be open to criticism if the meeting opens with blaming or shouting. 

Focus on the Facts 

While your own frustrations should be acknowledged, the point of feedback is to focus on addressing the problem itself.  

For example, if an employee is consistently missing their deadlines, rather than telling them about how you’re sick of their behaviour, spell out calmly how their actions are negatively impacting the team as a whole. 

Remain critical, but emphasize the facts with specific examples rather than your own feelings. Then, offer action-oriented suggestions to help the employee solve the issue. 

Watch Your Words 

More often than not, your employees are going to know when they have made a major mistake. When communicating about how to best address it, ensure you are not using demoralizing statements that call the employee’s intelligence or capabilities into question. They don’t need any help feeling embarrassed about their error, so the language you use when addressing it needs to be carefully thought out.  

Aim to avoid subjective statements and assessments (e.g. “You’re not showing enough passion about your work”), or sweeping generalizations (e.g. “You never contribute creatively during team brainstorming sessions”). 

Be Direct 

Ignoring or avoiding serious situations or minimizing the impact are easy outs for having difficult conversations with your employees. But, withholding constructive criticism actually harms your underperforming employees even further, since it is depriving them of the key information they could be using to improve in their work.  

When delivering negative feedback, aim to be professional and factual but still candid in what you are saying, stating the specifics in a tactful yet straightforward way. Just as you should avoid being overly harsh and demoralizing, you cannot afford to sugar-coat the harsher truths. 

Make it a Two-Way Conversation 

Feedback sessions do not have to be a lecture-style discussion of an employee’s behaviour. Regardless of the type of feedback you are giving, ensure you are receptive to what the employee has to say as well. Give them the opportunity to explain their perspective of their own actions and behaviours. 

When an employee feels comfortable to openly converse with their leader, they are much more likely to own up to shortcomings and ask for help. In addition, a two-way discussion presents the opportunity for an employee to bring your attention to any legitimate extenuating circumstances you otherwise might not have been aware of. 

Focus on Solutions 

Talking through the issue at hand is important, but the ultimate objective of giving feedback is to ensure that if an issue exists, it is rectified as swiftly as possible. 

Have possible solutions worked out for assisting the individual in their efforts to improve, and discuss them with the employee openly. Whether you need to provide them with additional training, offer more frequent check-ins on their progress and direction, or work out the kinks in a flawed system, do whatever you can to best help the employee get back on track and remedy their issue. 

Balance Criticism with Praise 

A skill any and all leaders need to have is knowing how and when to provide criticism. But this can be a slippery slope for inexperienced or untrained managers, with many running the risk of transforming into leaders who only comment when employees slip up. 

Ensure you are offering kudos for good work consistently, and recognizing both publicly and privately the accomplishments of your employees. This is an excellent way to boost their morale, reinforce positive behavior, and develop a good rapport with your team members that will make the difficult conversations easier to manage. 

At its core, employee feedback is about past behavior, delivered in the present, which has the potential to influence an employee’s future performance. Surprisingly, very little managers have actually received the proper training in giving feedback the right way, though the majority state that they want to improve in how they give feedback. 

Guidelines for Giving Feedback 

We have already discussed several key tips to delivering feedback, both positive and negative. Now, let’s have a look at some more general guidelines that you should keep in mind when planning out your feedback strategy moving forward: 

• Positive feedback can be offered in public and/or private. It is recommended however, that if planning to provide even positive feedback in public, that the employee doesn’t feel uncomfortable – know your audience.  Negative feedback, however, should only be given in private.  
• Feedback needs to be delivered in a timely manner. A best practice is to give it as close as possible to the occurrence, behavior, or issue that you intend to address. 
• Remain clear, thoughtful, and respectful regardless of the nature of the feedback or your personal sentiments about the employee. Ensure everything you say is accurate, specific, and limited only to the behavior you are intending to address and remedy. 
• Limit your feedback to areas that the employee has the ability to change. Providing feedback that is irrelevant or unchangeable will be rejected, and can be detrimental. 
• Use the word “I”, rather than “we”. Say “I observed you…”, rather than “we observed you…”. 
• Remain non-judgmental, and never personalize your feedback. Focus only on the behavior you want to address, and not on the qualities of the person you are giving feedback to. 
• Avoid “over-dumping”. Oftentimes, a receptive employee only needs one behavioral example to recognize the issue and understand where they need to improve. 
• Always identify next steps. A feedback session with no clear action plan is demoralizing, and erodes the opportunity for improvement into a discouraging lecture.  

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What is a Competency Assessment?

Assessing an employee’s capabilities is a cornerstone of any performance review process but measuring them against the specific needs and requirements of their role transforms that assessment component into a measurable practice called a competency assessment. 

What is a Competency Assessment? 

Competency is defined as the application of knowledge, skills, and behaviors used in performing specific job tasks. Usually, it is one of the key attributes being assessed when you are measuring an employee’s performance. A competency assessment, however, is the assessment of an employee’s capabilities against the requirements of their job. The goal of competency assessment is to identify any problems with an employee’s performance and to correct those issues before they affect work quality or customer care.  

The actual requirements of a role that a competency assessment relies on are outlined in what is called a competency model. A valuable competency model provides an overview of the key tasks and skills most critical to success in the role, not an outline of every activity being performed in the job. This more thorough description can be provided in a traditional job task analysis.  

In order to define an employee’s proficiency level, a competency assessment is performed on the tasks and skills identified in the competency model, for which a rating is selected based on how well the employee performs the task. Simply put, a competency assessment measures how (behaviors) an employee does the what (task or skill). When the individual’s proficiency level has been defined, it can then be compared with the target level, helping employers recognize proficiency or skill gaps for each relevant task and skill. 

The Benefits of Conducting a Competency Assessment 

While one of your top priorities should always be to keep an eye on how your employees are working and monitoring any potential skill gaps that could cause issues in the future, there are several key benefits to introducing competency assessments into your regular performance review strategy. Some of these include: 

1. Quantifying the Size of Skill Gaps.

It can be hard to miss skill gaps when they are causing extreme detriments to business, but most organizations are unaware of the actual quantity and size of all the skill gaps that can exist in their workforce. They can know they have them, but not have the means to recognize just how large or widespread they are, meaning they can’t use them to inform organizational plans, strategy, and priorities. 

As a leader, the decisions you make guide the future of your company. But when you don’t have competency assessment data or skill gap analyses to inform those key decisions, you can never confidently aim towards future successes. A competency assessment sheds light on those areas you might be missing, helping you fully understand your organizational capability and make the best decisions you can for the business. 

2. Informing Future Action.

If your role centers around learning, talent, and effectiveness, a competency assessment can help eliminate the data void and establish a culture of learning so that upskilling and reskilling can happen continuously. Ensuring all individuals have the necessary skills required to do their current and future jobs should be a given, but it is impossible to navigate, and then mitigate, any existing skill gaps effectively if you have no skills assessment data to inform that overview. 

Recognizing which individuals possess the required skills, and which don’t, enables individual learning and development programs to valuable employees to close those gaps. With the data accumulated from a competency assessment process, you can also pair high performers of one specific skill with others that have a skill gap in that area, closing gaps quickly by leveraging task-based mentoring as a learning strategy. In addition, a competency assessment system can also improve your talent acquisition strategy, since you can identify the areas of skills the organization lacks in and hire new employees with those skills accordingly to fill in those gaps.  

3. Driving Consistent Improvement.

A solid performance review strategy involves more than a single assessment approach. Especially today, organizational change is occurring at a faster and faster rate, to the point where sometimes the moment an employee is upskilled or reskilled, some of their newly learned skills have already become obsolete. 

The future of the business world is beginning to centre around a notion of continual skill reinvention, and consistent competency assessments gear towards that future. Driving capability within your organization begins when you create a cycle of assessment, ongoing development, and reassessment on those skills and tasks you have already worked on, providing you with a constantly updated current picture of capability at any time. By transforming your performance review process into a culture of ongoing, lifelong learning, leveraging skill-specific competency assessments, you can drive real growth within your organization.  

How to Complete a Competency Assessment 

For a competency assessment to be successful, you first need to have three key elements: 

1. A role-based competency model to assess individuals against. 
2. A competency assessment system that will facilitate the scaling, privacy, and capability analytics of the process. 
3. A personalized learning plan to create and promote individual reskill and upskill action plans for employees.  

It is possible to implement a competency assessment with only one of the first two elements but having all three in place before proceeding will produce the best results. The key takeaway, however, should be the importance of having a solid system of assessment itself. Historically, using basic tools such as spreadsheets or manual filing run a much higher risk of a breach of privacy or a lack of global control. Especially for larger companies, the volume of skill inventory data will be significant, so you need a system that can streamline the analytics for you and create data visualizations for the results.  

SpriggHR’s Performance Review Tool is a good example of a modern, streamlined approach to competency assessment. An element of the performance review tool includes a customizable Skills & Competencies section, where you can identify the specific skills and tasks required for a role and assign the relevant competencies to individuals working in that role. You can then measure the position-specific skills, knowledge, and behaviors against the employee’s actual performance, simplifying your competency assessment process and drawing out the key results for you without getting lost in the minutiae.  

The other key takeaway is, evidently, the critical nature of establishing learning plans that aim to expand the skill set of an individual through the building and execution of action plans. While the first two steps help you to capture competency data, you can’t address skill gaps without a concrete plan of action. 

In Summary 

Organizational growth depends on individual progress, but for employees to be able to do their jobs as well as they need to, they need to have self-awareness over the areas they are lacking in. By having a process in place that can systematically highlight those skill and task gaps, employees are much more likely to buy into the fact that there is action they need to take themselves should they wish to progress within the company. By leveraging a method of performance review that continuously provides the tools necessary to upskill and reskill employees in the right ways, and aligning their competencies with the needs of the business, you have a chance to set each person on a path toward continuous learning and growth.   

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How to Conduct an Effective Peer to Peer Review

By their very association, peers can be excellent motivators. They are on the frontlines with you, working side by side, and relying on you for support, just as you rely on them. And, unlike managers, they have access to the finer details required of their coworkers to complete their duties. Because of their heightened insight into how their coworkers work, they have some of the most useful knowledge for contributing to performance review feedback.  

What is Peer to Peer Review? 

When people discuss “peer reviews”, they are referring to the process of employees being assessed by their colleagues in terms of their performance, strengths and weaknesses, and other work-related aspects. It is also a term often used by scholars and authors, when they have their articles, research papers, and other publication material subjected to review by other writers. Their work will be critiqued, suggestions will be made, and those suggestions may be incorporated into the work before it is released for publication.  

The same general principle applies to peer review in the workplace. A peer to peer review system formalizes the conduct of these types of reviews within the company, with definite rules and policies in place on the what, who, where, when, and how of the conduct of the peer review process. Oftentimes, the peer review process calls for the solicitation of inputs from peers – teammates and colleagues – about the performance of a specific employee, while keeping the reviewer anonymous. 

The process of peer to peer reviews can be accomplished through several different approaches. Some organizations may design their peer review system in a way that incorporates all approaches, or they can choose only those they deem applicable to their circumstances. Some of the most common peer to peer review approaches are: 

• Simple Review: comments are solicited from peers about the performance of a specific employee. This method is straightforward and rather informal in its execution. Usually, the peers are interviewed either one-on-one or with a group, and the information is obtained from those interviews. The general rules that the feedback provider will remain anonymous. There are cases when their identity can be disclosed, however, usually when the review is being provided directly to the employee being reviewed, and not just their supervisor.  
• Inspection: a more rigorous version of a simple review, that requires the most time and resources, inspections involve specific stages that everyone must go through. This approach is usually selected when the purpose of the peer reviews is to specifically identify the weaknesses or shortcomings of the employee being evaluated.  
• Team Reviews: this approach involves a panel or a group providing an evaluation or assessment of an employee one at a time. They usually sit together and offer up their individual assessments, reaching a conclusion together.  

The Benefits of a Peer to Peer Review Process 

One of the most noted reasons for utilizing peer review programs is the role it plays in lightening the workload of managers and supervisors’ administration roles. The bulk and breadth of the employee review process, which can be time-consuming for managers especially of larger corporations, are “passed on” to the organization’s peer to peer review program. However, peer reviews present several other benefits that go far beyond taking some weight off of managers’ shoulders.  

1. Peer to peer review provides a closer look at the employee being evaluated.

No matter how effective a manager may be at assessing their people, or how tight they are with their team; they are still likely to omit performance insights about any given employee. This is especially true if there are other employees that are being subjected to review and assessment along with them. 

Even in the most ideal of work environments, employees tend to conduct themselves in a certain way in front of their supervisors, and typically another way in front of their peers. Thus, managers cannot fully trust what the employee demonstrates as the most valid. Through the peer to peer review process, employee assessments are completed in a more objective light, giving a more thorough insight into the employee and their strengths, weaknesses, and overall potential. 

2. Peer reviews help monitor and improve employee performance.

Basing your assessment of employee performance solely on the output and financial results of the company is not the way to manage people. Human resources remain one of the most important aspects of every organization.  Peer reviews help to identify gaps in performance that may have been overlooked, providing you the opportunity to address the employee’s performance issues. An employee with constructive feedback will then be able to focus more on those gaps and ideally have the support to improve on them.  

3. Peer reviews help monitor business processes.

Peer review can also function as a roundabout way to assess whether your business processes are still working efficiently and effectively, or if any adjustments need to be made. They can also provide indicators of whether your organizational structure needs to be modified. Through peer review, you can have a clearer sense of the relationship between work quality and output, compared to the systems and structures in place in your company, from an insider’s perspective. Data points of performance by role and / or team can provide insightful information regarding business performance gaps. 

4. Peer review is effective for team building.

When it comes to motivating employees, team building is one of the most successful methods a company can use. Integrating the peer review process into your team-building setup is a great way to leverage those benefits. When peers provide their input, employee bonding can be strengthened, and this positive impact will have a ripple effect on employee performance once they have returned to their usual working environment. 

Linking a peer to peer review process to performance appraisal, and by default, employee rewards and recognition, is one of the most effective ways to provide support for collaboration and teamwork within your company. It is highly recommended that peers are provided tips / training guidelines on how to deliver feedback (even if presented anonymously).  

Take our White Paper on Peer to Peer Reviews to go! 

How to Conduct a Peer to Peer Review 

Creating, maintaining, and supporting a successful real-time peer review program can be challenging, While there is no specific formula to creating the perfect peer to peer review process, there are certain best practices and general steps you can follow to ensure your peer review process delivers quality data. 

Reflect on Core Values 

Ensure that the metrics in part, upon which employees are measured are aligned with your company’s core values. In any review system, input is being solicited based on the opinion of how an individual demonstrates the metric in question.  If you don’t have clearly defined values (specific, desired behaviors) the evaluator will not be able to accurately assess their colleague’s performance.  

Choose the “Peers” Wisely 

While it is the supervisors and managers that will use the data collected by the review process for decision-making, the process itself is conducted by employees. They are the individuals who will play a key role in the review process, so it is critical to define the peer groups in a rational manner. One of the most important parts of this is identifying the groups that you will ask or get information from regarding the employee being assessed. In order to ensure the best quality feedback from them, you should put in place certain guidelines, such as qualifications that the evaluating employees must have in order to be interviewed.  A great example is to determine if the evaluator has any direct experience in working with the individual on any past projects thereby giving them a vantage point to providing quality feedback. 

Embrace New Technology 

Gathering input from employees about their peers does not have to be done solely through traditional methods. Today’s workforce is global and multi-generational, and more adept in social media and technology than ever. Choosing a program or software to streamline peer to peer reviews can be an effective way to keep employees engaged in the review process, while still drawing out useful information and evaluations from them. SpriggHR provides a Multi-Rather Feedback Option in its 360 Degree Feedback feature, where performance feedback can be obtained from supervisors, peers, and even customers alike, with a few simple clicks.  

Explain and Celebrate the Launch 

If a peer to peer review system is new and unfamiliar to the workplace, positioning it as a change designed to help recognize and celebrate your employees is a great strategy. Rather than framing the process as a new way to monitor performance, the process can be framed to ensure that your key objective is to recognize the qualities and achievements of employees that may be overlooked with a one-to-one review process.  

Get Buy-In from All 

The peer review process involves more than just the employee and their peers. Employee performance processes affect the entire organization. Managers and leaders especially should be early adopters and promoters of the new system. Active support from senior executives communicates to lower staff that the program is a priority. You should also ensure that any employee, at all levels, feels empowered to participate.  

In action, peer to peer review systems involve everyone, although to varying degrees. On the part of managers and supervisors, the system should be reinforced and promoted through their own self-reviews and assessments.  

Empower Managers to Track Results 

 Sprigg’s Continuous Feedback feature enables employees and managers alike to give or receive feedback instantly and provides managers with the much-needed insights to monitor employee growth against the parameters they were evaluated against. Staying on top of monitoring the appraisal process and the data points provided, is essential to identifying trends in employee performance. 

Make Room for Flexibility Within the System 

While the purpose of establishing a new evaluation process is to create rigor, structure, and ultimately fairness, it does not mean that flexibility loses importance. Designing something, especially a system that involves your employees so intently, in such a way that it cannot be modified to suit specific situations will only decrease the effectiveness of the system itself.  It is recommended that regular feedback on the overall effectiveness of the system be regularly solicited. Aggregate reporting or data summary output will also determine the value of the system’s capabilities. 

For example, when dealing with a certain employee, you may have to take a different approach or change up the questions being asked instead of “sticking to the script”. This adaptive approach should be allowed, and even encouraged where appropriate. Flexibility and relevance are key when measuring the performance results of an individual.  

Encourage Frequent and Timely Recognition 

Real-time feedback has been proven time and time again as the single most effective approach to shaping desired behavior. When solid work is noted immediately, the employee feels compelled to repeat it immediately, and their peers are more likely to emulate it quickly. If deserved recognition is delayed, the link between the behavior and the reward may be lost, minimizing the likelihood of that behavior being reinforced. 

Providing a quick follow-up to the conduct of the peer review is critical. If employees see that there is prompt and frequent recognition following the peer to peer review process, they are going to be more motivated and more involved in the process the next time around.  

In Summary 

Effective, real-time peer to peer reviews motivate employees to perform well every day of the year, not just when the quarterly or annual performance appraisal is approaching. By instilling a sense of accountability amongst and between your employees, and not just from the top-down.  It’s also important to emphasize that peer to peer review systems cannot be casually instituted into your organization. If they are to be at all successful, they need to be linked to the specific performance indicators required or expected of the individual and ideally, the core company values. The process needs to be compatible with the latest technologies, be launched and communicated well, be used by everyone in a timely and effective fashion and be deliver quality, useful data that identifies performance trends. 

Take the White Paper to go! 

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How to Recognize and Avoid the Horn Effect 

At one point or another, everyone has been told that first impressions are important. That being said, an initial negative impression doesn’t necessarily mean that everything the person does moving forward should be viewed through that lens. Unfortunately, more often than not, that’s exactly what can happen, because of something called the horn effect. 

What is the Horn Effect?

First discovered in 1920 by psychologist Edward L. Thorndike, the horn effect is a cognitive bias that can influence how someone is viewed. Essentially, he discovered that the first impression of someone dictates how their future actions are seen – basically, the horn effect is making assumptions about someone based on very little information, or judging someone and attributing qualities to them based on one known trait. A very common example of this would be the bias that if someone is overweight, it automatically means they’re also lazy. 

The flip side of the horn effect is called the halo effect – it is a very similar cognitive bias, with the main difference being that the horn effect attributes negative qualities to someone, whereas the halo effect attributes positive qualities. Both can influence a bias, however.  

Thorndike’s research centered around asking high-ranking officers to evaluate their soldiers on several different qualities. The results consistently showed that soldiers ranked highly in the first few categories scored high in the others as well, and soldiers who ranked poorly in the first few categories scored low in the others. 

Both of these biases are unfortunate results, as they skew the perception of someone. If the first trait that comes to one’s attention is negative, there will inherently be a tendency to overlook other, more positive traits, and vice versa. These biases are also very hard to reverse once a positive or negative trait has been attributed to someone.  

The horn effect, as well as the halo effect, can be present in many situations, but two of the more impactful times are when interviewing a potential employee, and when conducting performance reviews. 

The impact of the horn effect when interviewing

The horn effect can play an important role when hiring. If not identified, it can lead to assumptions about the potential candidate based purely on the first impression, or something minor or even insignificant they did.  

If decisions are then made based on these assumptions, the interviewer may get a bad impression of the candidate, and likely overlook other positive aspects – only to hire the wrong person in their place. 

So how should an interviewer avoid the horn effect when looking at potential candidates? 

Avoiding the horn effect when hiring

• Recognizing the bias exists: knowing the horn effect and halo effect both exist is a good start to avoiding them. Try to set emotional reactions to irrelevant things aside, and focus on their professional behavior. 
• Interview structure: structure the interview so the interviewer doesn’t overly influenced with first impressions. Make sure each step of the interview focuses on the job, and objectively analyze the candidate at each step. 
• Interview design: Working in tandem with the structure, design questions to analyze the candidates’ ability to do the job and fit in with the office culture. The STAR method is very popular as part of Behavior-Based Interviewing practices.  Ask the candidate to describe: a Situation that they were involved in a project, what Tasks they were responsible for, the Actions they took and the Results that were yielded.  

As mentioned above, the horn effect is prevalent in both hiring processes as well as when conducting reviews. Here is how it affects reviews: 

The impact of the horn effect when conducting reviews

Performance reviews are an important part of employee growth, and as such, should be conducted regularly. However, they are also an area in which the horn effect – and also the halo effect – can regularly appear and make an impact.  

The horn effect can cause a reviewer to give their ratings based on one perceived negative attribute, which could unfairly skew the overall results to be much more negative than they should be. On the other side, the halo effect could result in better-than-deserved ratings, which not only can elevate a mediocre employee to a higher status, but can also hurt them, as they won’t be getting constructive feedback needed to actually improve themselves. 

Avoiding the horn effect when conducting a review

Documentation

• Take notes on the employee throughout the year 
• Make sure to have a record of both positive and negative aspects of performance with specific examples to cite  
• Without notes, reviewers can tend to base evaluations on recent events, or – sometimes worse – their specific memory of recent events 

More regular touch-point meetings

• More regular (weekly) meetings to stay connected and offer real-time feedback and coaching 
• Gives managers more chances to look at aspects of performance, and notice trends 
• Gives employee more chance to work on correcting their behaviors 

Analyze reviews

• Keep an eye out for reviews that may be skewed by the horn effect or the halo effect 
• Check for little variation in feedback 
• Look for a consistent reference to a few examples of performance 

Final thoughts

The horn effect (and also the halo effect) is common in many situations, but with proper steps, it can be circumvented. Many managers tend to think they’re being fair when appraising a potential employee or conducting a review, but can be unaware of their cognitive bias. Acknowledging that the horn effect exists is the first step to avoiding it, and ensuring everyone is viewed within a fair and equitable practice. 

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How Rater Bias Negatively Impacts Performance Reviews

Employee performance evaluations can be a challenging task for many leaders. When the proper assessment tools are not in place, it can be challenging to measure using a strategy utilized by millions of companies, which is the performance rating. While there may be ease of determining employee, abilities based on feedback from supervisors, subordinates, and peers, the process of rating others is almost always negatively influenced by rater bias.  

Rater Bias & Performance Reviews 

Rater bias refers to an error in judgment that can occur when an individual allows their pre-existing biases to affect the evaluation of another. This is a common issue when it comes to employee performance reviews and is a hazard of any rating system that is difficult to eliminate but not impossible to manage. 

The error of rater biases can be a result of personal opinions or perspectives, and are almost always unreasonable and stereotypes, though they vary from individual to individual. These biases can skew employee ratings too high or too low, negatively impacting the accuracy of performance reviews and nullifying their validity. When we fail to consider rater biases during performance reviews, it makes obtaining a true estimate of employee performance very challenging.  

Types of Rater Bias 

Humans are fallible, and biases can also be an outcome of an unconscious mind. Rater Biases pervade in our nature and exist in all organizations no matter their size. Though unhealthy, it is a reality of any performance management system. Because of this, it is crucial for Human Resource professionals to have a strong understanding of the different rater biases that exist. Understanding them thoroughly can prevent decision-making errors, which ultimately strengthens a company’s ability to use performance ratings to its full potential. 

The Leniency and Severity Effect 

The leniency bias involves a rater being too lenient on the person they are rating. The employee is rated positively irrespective of their performance, which means all scores are very high, making it challenging to recognize an employee’s true pattern of strengths and weaknesses. 

The severity bias, the manager is too rigid while rating employees, increasing the chances of employees receiving low ratings even if they perform well and show improvement. This creates an unfairly negative representation of the person being rated and can have serious implications for employees and for HR decision making.  

The Central Tendency Bias 

In this bias, the manager gives an average rating to all employees, irrespective of their past or present performance. This usually happens when a manager is lethargic, and instead of reviewing each individual employee, they give similar ratings to all. A rating of “3” on a 5-point scale for every question is a clear example of central tendency bias. In this case, good performers suffer, and poor performers are granted an undue advantage. 

The Halo and Horns Effect 

These biases address the phenomena where a manager tends to generalize their ratings of an employee based on specific positive or negative events. 

The halo effect refers to the tendency for a single positive rating to cause raters to inflate all other ratings. Positive ratings across the board aren’t helpful when making decisions, so it is crucial to watch carefully for evidence of the halo effect in employee rating data. 

The horn effect is the opposite. It is the tendency for a single negative attribute to cause raters to deflate the ratings in all areas by ignoring the employee’s recent performance. Like the halo effect, the horns effect makes decision-making challenging and might lead to unfair sanctions or inappropriate employee dismissal. There are legal ramifications for such assessments also. 

The Recency Bias 

Performance reviews are often made with a particular time frame in mind. This could mean a focus on the last quarter, or the past fiscal year. The recency bias occurs when a recent event clouds memory of previous performance. In this case, the manager overlooks the overall performance of an employee and judges them instead based on their recent performance. The recency bias leads to overestimates if the employee has recently performed exceptionally well, or underestimates if they have recently performed poorly despite past success.  

The Affinity Bias 

People are prone to favor someone who is like them. Typically, men rate men higher than women, women rate women higher than men. Older employees rate their contemporaries higher than younger employees, and so on. Similarity in age, gender, race, and experience all affect ratings. The affinity bias refers to this effect, where the rater tends to give higher ratings to employees with whom they share certain similarities in terms of age, gender, attitudes, perception, education background, experiences, hometown, even similar work habits. This can lead to unjust inflated ratings, and unfair low ratings.  

The Alienation Bias 

This bias refers to the opposite of the affinity bias. As the name suggests, this bias occurs when the rater alienates an employee with whom they may not have anything in common. This is evidently unreasonable, since performance should always be the principal factor of consideration while reviewing employees.  

The Comparative Bias 

In this effect, the rater makes comparisons among all employees in the organization, instead of reviewing individual performance. While comparisons can be helpful in moderation when making ratings, reliance upon them can lead to overestimates or underestimates of a person’s abilities. For example, one employee may be extremely organized, but slightly less organized compared to another co-worker. Their boss might then rate that employee lower than they deserve, because they can’t help comparing them to their more organized co-worker.  

The First Impression Error 

In this bias, the rater forms a premature opinion about an employee, and conducts their performance review based on that first impression. The premature opinion may be positive or negative, but the rater judges the employee in the future review period based solely on that opinion, rather than by evaluation their performance over time. 

Situational Bias 

In this bias, the rater inflates or deflates the ratings of an employee based on factors that are beyond the employee’s own control.  

Dispositional Bias 

Dispositional bias refers to cases where the rater seeks opinions from the supervisors of the employee, rather than personally reviewing the employee’s performance for themselves. This leads to inaccuracies in their performance review, due to the inherent distilling of information that occurs in this process.  

How to Overcome Rater Bias 

Measuring and monitoring employee performance is crucial to any employee and ultimately, the organization’s success. In order to promote continuance, but to reduce the potential for rater bias to occur, try using some of the following tactics. 

Written Records 

Raters should resort to document trails in order to accurately assess the overall performance of employees. By referring to a written record that tracks their performance on a weekly basis, raters will be able to accurately judge employee performance over a period. An example could be notes taken by the manager after each weekly, 1:1 meeting, where they jot down the state of the performance of each individual employee in a brief manner. 

Humans are bound to make errors, especially in the evaluation of other individuals. Proper documentation and a clear, written outline of progress help to avoid such biases by providing a clear picture of their overall performance which will ultimately make preparing the review a fair and equitable exercise (not to mention much simpler to complete). 

Continuous Feedback 

An open Feedback forum can be designed and made accessible to all members of an organization, or utilization of a “Continuous Feedback” online software like the one offered by Sprigg will help raters to receive feedback from all positions, making performance reviews dimensional and not limited to an individual’s perspective.  

Clear Goals Definition 

Top management should aim to clearly define the goals and targets for all individual departments and be able to break down those expectations to everyone. The goals should be communicated to all individuals in an organization, ensuring each one fully understands the requirements of the task. Managers should also communicate the performance evaluation process of each employee, so all employees have a thorough understanding of their individual contribution towards the company goals and the process of evaluating their success in those goals. 

The Role of the Moderator 

Top management often acts as a moderator in the performance review process. It is their responsibility to contribute to the oversight of employee appraisals, acting as an outside perspective that can catch any imbalance or rater bias that is occurring in the process.  

The Role of HR 

Human Resources should act as a support system for employees during the employee appraisal process. HR should ensure that all the problems and concerns of employees are addressed as soon as possible and should initiate healthy employee-employer relationships. This could mean the implementation of the weekly 1:1 meeting process, offering tools and format for promoting regular discussions. It could also take the form of organizing team effectiveness events that encourage a friendly and productive work environment built on healthy collaboration. They should also ensure top managers are not too rigid or too lenient while dealing with employees by offering coaching or review practice sessions for leaders. 

Work Culture 

Top management should always aim to maintain a culture of trust in their organization. Members of a team tend to mimic those of their leaders, so ensuring that favoritism and rater bias are eliminated is necessary to ensure equal employee treatment is promoted and practices. Top performers in the company should be recognized and rewarded, and the low performers should be given the necessary training and tools or at minimum, the opportunity to improve so that all employees can experience fairness and equity in the treatment of their performance assessment. 

Final Thoughts 

Rater bias can skew performance reviews either negatively or positively, regardless of an employee’s actual performance. While an employee can control how they perform their job, they have no control over a rater’s bias against them.  

Rater bias is, unfortunately, inevitable and can never be completed eliminated. However, raters can be taught to be consciously mindful when conducting performance reviews. Each time a rater assesses an employee’s performance, they should regularly ask themselves why they are choosing to rate them the way they are. This allows for the rater to be continuously conscious of whether their ratings are in fact motivated by unintentional bias and can ensure fair and just ratings are provided to each individual employee. A very effective strategy is to provide a specific example with details of a given situation. This can provide a fair and valid perspective when conveying either positive or constructive feedback. 

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The Manager’s Role in Performance Reviews

By: Jilaine Parkes

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When done correctly, with the appropriate mindset and the right software, performance management tools like the suite we offer at Sprigg, can offer big advantages to both the manager and the employee.

The question on the table now is why organizations would want to ask employees to participate in either employee performance evaluation or a performance management system. Good reasons exist for advocating the basic concept of the performance evaluation.

Where The Employee Performance Evaluation Fits

In some form, most organizations have an overall plan for business success. The employee performance evaluation process, including goal setting, performance measurement, regular feedback, employee recognition, and documentation of employee progress, ensures this success. The process — done with care and understanding — helps employees see how their jobs and expected contributions fit within the bigger picture of their organization.

The more effective evaluation processes accomplish these goals and have additional benefits. Documented performance evaluations are communication tools that ensure the supervisor and her reporting staff members are clear about the requirements of each employee’s job. The evaluation also communicates the desired outcomes or outputs needed from each employee’s job and defines how they will be measured.

Interested in learning more? Contact the Sprigg team today!

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While employee performance evaluation systems take many forms from organization to organization, these are the components likely to be included. Some are more effective than others. But the goals for the employee performance evaluation system, or the appraisal process, or the performance management process are similar. The differences appear in the approach and the details. And, that can make all the difference in how the system is perceived by and carried out by employees.

To achieve the best results HR departments and Managers should embrace and work towards these core goals:

Clarity and Purpose

The employee and the supervisor are clear about the employee’s goals, required outcomes or outputs, and how the success of the contributions will be assessed.

Employee Development and Organizational Improvement

The goals of the best employee performance evaluations are also employee development and organizational improvement. The employee performance evaluation helps employees accomplish both personal development and organizational goals. The act of writing down the goals takes the employee one step closer to accomplishing them.Since goals, deliverables and measurements are negotiated in an effective employee performance evaluation, the employee and the supervisor are committed to achieving them. The written personal development goals are a commitment from the organization to assist the employee to grow in his or her career.

Documentation

Employee performance evaluation provides legal, ethical, and visible evidence that employees were actively involved in understanding the requirements of their jobs and their performance. The accompanying goal setting, performance feedback, and documentation ensure that employees understand their required outputs. In the event that an employee is not succeeding or improving in his job performance, the performance evaluation documentation can be used to develop a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). This plan provides more detailed goals with more frequent feedback to an employee who is struggling to perform. The goal is improvement but non-performance can lead to disciplinary action up to and including employment termination.

Ratings

In many organizations numeric rankings are used to compare an employee’s performance with the performance of other employees. Numeric ratings are frequent components of these systems, too. In the old days these ratings were subject to questions of subjectivity. New transparent and metric-driven tools like Sprigg’s Cedar platform means that these concerns are a thing of the past!

Consistent, Regular and Non-Discriminatory

The employee performance evaluation provides evidence of non-discriminatory promotion, pay, and recognition processes. This is an important consideration in training supervisors to perform consistent, regular, non-discriminatory employee performance evaluations. The documentation of success and failure to achieve goals is a critical component of the employee performance evaluation process.

The post What Are The Goals of The Employee Performance Evaluation? appeared first on SpriggHR.

Start-Up or Fed-Up?

The post The Importance of Performance Reviews at Micro-Enterprise Levels appeared first on SpriggHR.

Positive phrases:

Sheila maintains a good schedule and is a reliable employee.

Jim is always on time; ready to work when his shift begins and punctual returning from his lunch break.

Tom sets an example with his perfect attendance.

Negative phrases:

Sheila is an unreliable worker and is often late to work.

Jim is often tardy at the beginning of his work shift and consistently late returning from lunch.

Tom is continually late for work and must improve his attendance record in order to comply with company policy.

Attitude

Positive phrases:

Bob always has a positive attitude and he makes others feel good when he’s around.

Jane is always enthusiastic and helps motivate team members.

Tom is very level-headed and handles stressful situations with ease.

Tori is quick to congratulate coworkers and builds trust within her team.

Negative phrases:

Bob is somewhat pessimistic and his moods affect other employees.

Jane is careless and unmotivated, which ultimately slows the team down.

Tom is very emotional and does not handle stressful situations well.

Tori often complains about coworkers and builds resentment within her team.

Listening Skills

Positive phrases:

Heidi is sincerely interested in what others have to say and listens fully before responding.

Damon listens to and promptly follows all directions.

Valerie is always an attentive and active listener.

Justin encourages feedback from his customers, listens and works to resolve any problems.

Negative phrases:

Heidi is disinterested in what others have to say and interrupts others before they finish speaking.

Damon does not listen to directions and repeatedly asks management to repeat themselves.

Valerie is an inattentive listener and rarely asks for clarification.

Justin disregards customer feedback and interacts only when necessary.

Job Knowledge

Positive phrases:

Doug demonstrates and uses his job knowledge on a daily basis.

Michelle always applies new knowledge to her work and keeps up with changes in her field.

As we implement new rules and upgrade software and equipment, Joe is always the first to understand and adjust to the changes.

Judy’s skill set exceeds job requirements.

Negative phrases:

Doug is continually turning in sub-par work and needs to improve his job knowledge.

Michelle repeatedly asks the same questions about her job duties and does not retain important information required to perform her job well.

As we implement new rules and upgrade software and equipment, Joe struggles to learn new technology and adapts very slowly.

Judy’s skill set does not meet job requirements.

Read more: http://www.ehow.com/list_7480173_helpful-performance-evaluation-phrases.html#ixzz32IUk3wvl

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