December 01, 2004
People Management, Appraisals and Pay Reviews
A great blog post from Esther Derby on how to approach and conduct performance appraisals.
She points out that performance reviews should in no way be linked to any salary changes. I'd go one step further and suggest putting as big a gap as possible between a person's performance appraisal and their pay review to emphasise the separation. In an ideal world this would be about six months.
The other point that resonates is that we should avoid any sort of performance grading or mark. As soon as this is introduced to an appraisal process it becomes competitive and even combative. It's something to do with human nature I think. Instead of looking at positive ways of working better (which doesn't mean longer hours) we spend the performance review justifying why we deserve to score more than our colleagues. We avoid admitting to any kind of failure as this will result in being marked down. I've reviewed people's appraisal forms before that are so full of platitudes and bland complements that they could describe any member of a team, let alone allow you to plan a positive series of steps for that person to undertake in the next period and improve their performance.
Which leads us to the conclusion that linking grading to pay rises must therefore be the ultimate sin.
Esther's piece is a great companion to a couple of classic Joel Spolsky pieces - Incentive Pay Considered Harmful and Fog Creek Compensation.
Posted by Andy Todd at December 01, 2004 03:44 PM
Who formulated the PDR system?
I am studying for CMI Exec Diploma in Management and have chosen the impact of the introduction of the PDR system into my working environment
( shipbuilding).
I am looking for any links as to any particular theorists as to WHO initiated the PDR system?
can you help?
Ralph