Employee Learning, Not Management Control, Is The True Purpose Of Performance Appraisals - Essay Example

Employee learning, not management control, is the true purpose of performance appraisals BY YOU YOUR ACADEMIC ORGANISATION HERE HERE Employee learning, not management control, is the true purpose of performance appraisals Executive Summary The employee performance appraisal is designed to illustrate an employee’s weaknesses versus their individual strengths and should be used as a tool to improve employee competence. Under the best organisational conditions, the performance appraisal will highlight an employee’s contribution compared to their peers and set the standard by which behaviour and job role activities should be regulated. When used as a tool for development, the intended outcome of the appraisal is to ensure employee learning. It is not a device for management control to demand compliance. This report highlights the perils of using the appraisal as a control device. The appraisal argument Managers, in today’s organisations, require the need to ensure employees are focused on meeting corporate goals and attaining goals related to their individual job roles. Policy is generally the tool of choice to ensure compliance, created to act as a guideline for improving or managing employee behaviour. Managerial controls are best managed through in-house policy creation and should never include the performance appraisal as a means to guarantee compliance. In progressive organisations, the performance appraisal is created as a tool to monitor employee job function, unique contribution, and assess the overall learning capabilities of employees. Abraham Maslow, a famous 20th century psychologist, created the Hierarchy of Needs which describes employee motivations in order to help them become a more well-rounded employee. This model describes basic human needs to include security, belonging and self-esteem as needs that must be fulfilled in order to become high-performing business contributors. “The satisfaction of the need for esteem produces feelings of self-confidence, prestige, power and control. Individuals feel useful when they feel they have some sort of effect on their environment” (Gambrel & Cianci, 2003, p.144). Self-esteem development is paramount for today’s human resource managers, as it is the determinant of how employees view themselves and their role within the organisation. It is because of these needs that the performance appraisal has been developed, helping employees to uncover their many talents and give them a tool for feedback as a means to improve self-esteem. Employees, at the most basic needs level, need reinforcement to give them guidance about their performance, their peer or manager relationships, and to help them understand which weaknesses require change or improvement. The appraisal acts as a feedback mechanism that provides empowerment, self-esteem development, and helps build a positive status identity within the organisation. Understanding that employees have emotional needs is the basis of the performance appraisal, and it should never be used as a control mechanism. Managers in need of control should not be developing performance appraisals with strict compliance criteria inserted, as this will set unrealistic goals or make the employee feel as if they are being restricted within the organisation. Managers who enjoy a high level of control over employees might be tempted to use the performance appraisal simply to highlight weaknesses, acting as a form of documentation to ensure employee compliance. However, this does not promote a sense of security or self-esteem development, and the employee will likely begin to resent the appraisal process because it becomes a tool to identify only negative job role contributions. This can damage relationships between the employee and the manager, leading to high turnover rates when the employee feels that their basic needs are not being met in relation to self-confidence development or appreciation for their positive contributions. There are always going to be situations that occur within the organisation that bring employees stressors, such as work-family conflict or constantly changing job role demands. Employees require emotional support that understands and comforts, with managers working to alleviate emotional stress and threats to self-esteem that work-family conflicts can create (Lawrence, 2006). Usually, the manager simply creates a temporary flexible working schedule to allow the employee to manage their household problems that tend to spill into the workplace. However, a control-minded manager might incorporate certain mandates into the performance appraisal that do not allow the employee to enjoy flexible hours or other benefits that improve their work-family stresses. In situations where family life has caused work problems or lost productivity, a manager with high control expectations would highlight these problems and demand that work and home life be separated as a form of compliance. In this type of situation, the employee will feel that their job security is being affected and might resist any future management efforts to change their behaviour. In a situation where an appraisal is used to highlight an employee’s perceived inability to cope with home-related problems, they are not going to be motivated to learn and improve their competencies. Even though the appraisal has highlighted each individual situation that has occurred where employees have not been as productive as the company demands, long-term effects will include diminished status and anger against the organisation or the manager for not considering their needs. The long-term effect of using the employee appraisal as a tool for control is de-motivated staff and poor relationships between managers and their subordinates. Some experts believe that using the performance appraisal as a control instrument is “inappropriate, unworkable and unacceptable in knowledge-based organisations” (Morris, Stanton & Young, 2007, p.18). This is because organisations require the ongoing talent of employees to sustain the organisation or improve their competitive position. As organisations become more knowledge-based with flatter management hierarchies, employees need to be engaged rather than controlled in order to maximize performance and ensure positive communications between inter-company divisions. The development of human resources is to help employees develop their talents, either through experience on the job or through training, to become better resources for the company in terms of human capital. When regular performance appraisals are conducted, in this type of environment where knowledge is a key resource, employees are assessed for their training needs or to identify where they have exceeded organisational expectations. In a resource-focused organisation where the exchange of knowledge is important for competitive advantage, to use the appraisal as a tool for compliance will segregate the worker from human resources and make them less willing to take on extended learning to become more well-rounded business contributors. Some managers develop a 360 degree feedback system, where the opinion of more than just the divisional manager is considered. This system includes feedback from other employees, customers, or other in-house managers in order to highlight an employee’s total contribution, either negative or positive. The majority of today’s managers believe that the 360 degree feedback system “enhances the review process and makes it easier to identify personal development needs” (Carmichael, 2009, p.74). However, a control-minded manager might look at this as an opportunity to use third-party opinion to highlight an employee’s continuing weaknesses. By having evidence of failures that come from multi-source channels, the manager can pinpoint where an employee has failed and simply demand that they change these behaviours. However, what this creates is animosity between the employee and the manager where they feel they are being evaluated improperly and not enough of their strengths are being expressed or exposed. Even though the manager might be able to drive compliance through the appraisal, the long-lasting impact is the development of a poor or imbalanced organisational culture that will likely have problems with high turnover rates from dissatisfied employees. The performance appraisal, when used as a training tool, is much more than simply payment by result. Companies where annual raises occur based on performance data from the appraisal tool build motivation through compensatory incentives. Under transactional leadership theory, the manager builds a series of controls by simply rewarding employees when their contribution to meeting company goals is deemed superior. However, this does not provide the manager with tools for coaching or mentoring, both activities that appeal to the employees’ sense of self-confidence and empowerment. Instead, the performance appraisal simply becomes a tool for ensuring yearly bonus or additional compensation where the employee seeks only to meet the minimum criteria necessary to achieve bonus pay. A well-developed performance appraisal, however, is much more transformational, using aspects of charismatic personality during the assessment, setting an appropriate vision, and is based less on contingent rewards. The assessing manager should recognise employee failures as opportunities for improvement and use language and demeanour that show managerial support. When weaknesses have been identified, the employee should be exposed to different training packages or on-the-job training to illustrate that the company considers their development to be a top priority. In most organisations where human capital and human talent are needed to sustain competitive advantage, using the data from the performance appraisal as a means to guarantee compliance with have long-lasting, negative effects on relationships. If employee learning is not the intended outcome of the appraisal, then it is nothing more than a habitual tool that provides once-yearly assessment of employees, identifies their weaknesses, and then gives the manager ammunition to elicit a series of individual controls. A control-minded manager, fitting the transactional leader profile, might argue that this is highly appropriate in an environment where employees are inherently lazy or need constant supervision. This type of manager might look toward the appraisal as much less of a tool for the promotion of learning, but simply to ensure that employees remain focused on their company-mandated job roles and performance efforts. However, despite this argument, even when an appraisal is conducted in this fashion or in a high-output environment, it still promotes learning by highlighting an employee’s weaknesses and allows them opportunity to make changes to these behaviours. Even though the manager may have it in their mind to use the data as a method of controlling future behaviour, it still captures the attention of the employee and makes them consider their actions, thus learning has been achieved. Conclusion The performance appraisal, based on the emotional needs of employees, should never be considered a tool for guaranteeing control. Despite the arguments from transactional managers who believe only in rewarding when contributions have exceeded corporate expectations, the appraisal tool provides countless opportunities for learning. Employees learn by altering their behaviours when exposed to their failings. Employees learn when they are driven toward new training packages that are related to their identified weaknesses. Employees even learn about the opinion of their peers or other divisional managers, or customers, thereby changing their behaviours to better suit a broader organisational culture or focus on quality customer service. The only thing the performance appraisal can accomplish is identifying strengths versus weaknesses and give an indication where training is needed. As a control tool, the end result is employee dissatisfaction and causes problems with emotional needs at the foundational level. References Carmichael, M. 2009, An all-around appraisal success, Human Resources, London. July, p.74. Gambrel, P. & Cianci, R. 2003, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Does it Apply in a Collectivist Culture?, Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 8(2), pp.143-162. Lawrence, S. 2006, An integrative model of perceived available support, work-family conflict and support mobilisation, Journal of Management and Organization, Lyndfield. 12(2), pp.160-179. Morris, L., Stanton, P. & Young, S. 2007, Performance management in higher education – Development versus control, New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, Auckland. 32(2), pp.17-32. Read More