Reasons for Measuring Performance

Reasons for Measuring Performance

Advantages

helping set objectives and planning work schedules
rewarding efficient and effective workers
promoting, separating or transferring as appropriate
evaluating different work methods, tools or equipment
assessing or modifying working conditions
estimating and allocating costs
determining when and if a problem arises
assessing employee's attitudes
increasing supervisors' understanding of staff needs or
improving and strengthening supervisor/subordinate relationships.

Need to know the purpose

Assessors, and assessed, should know the aim of the assessment, for comments and evaluations may well be different for different purposes.

Disadvantages

They are usually costly and time-consuming to set up and run.
Their relationship to pay is often unclear.
They can over-emphasise the period immediately before the assessment.
Supervisors are often reluctant to write criticisms down (unless they are so clear that everyone is aware of them anyway).
To record continuing solid performance year after year can become a hollow exercise.
The person being appraised is in a weak position because that person must subsequently live with the appraiser's values and is therefore not in a good position to oppose the appraisal.
The most important factors are usually intangible &emdash; co-operation, customer contact, creativity, judgement, and so on&emdash;and these are the hardest to appraise.

Criteria for Measuring Performance

Relevance

Each criterion must be specifically related to the job of the individual being assessed
If the job does not have obviously measurable characteristics, then the assessment system has to use substitutes.
What must be avoided are substitutes which are irrelevant to performance, eg, the supervisor's standard of dress.
Assessment systems should examine, wherever possible, that which is measurable:
1. alternatives should be directly related to the job
2. there should be no room for varying interpretations.

Tell it like it is.

Not everyone works in an environment where they receive accurate, timely and specific feed-back on their work performance. That can leave them uncertain and even apprehensive.

Normally No News is taken to mean Good News. Tensions can build up, and communication can diminish. But it is not only the follower who becomes tense, the leader can also feel stress as behaviours that were once tolerable, gradually become unacceptable.

Recently a colleague of mine complained about the way one of his staff dressed, and how he answered the phones. I asked whether this person had been told specifically what was required. My colleague looked at me in stunned disbelief and said You must be kidding. Surely they would have enough common sense to know?

Well perhaps they should have known, but common sense is less common than one might expect. More importantly, here in Australia, industrial relations law requires that we state specifically what we require of employees in terms of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

I agree that it sounds weird, but try it and you might be pleasantly surprised that not only do you not get the back-lash that you had expected, you actually get the improved performance that you are looking for.

Oh, and finally, when you do get the improved performance, please try to find an appropriate way of rewarding this.

22/8/99 Malcolm Brown

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Free from bias

All those being assessed should be given equal opportunity to score well.
Equal conditions in which to operate - time, resources, materials and so on
Allowances have to be made for those operating under adverse conditions

Reliability

The same person should receive the same assessments at different times, all other things being equal.

If the conditions remain the same, but the assessor changes, then a different assessment implies the criterion is unreliable.

Reliability can perhaps be equated with consistency.

Availability

The chosen system will probably have to be

relatively quick to implement,
cost effective, and

reproducible, from year to year and job to job.

Trust

For ready acceptance of even the most objective of measures, there still needs to be a modicum of trust between assessor and those being asessed.

Go to Systems for Measuring Performance

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