Digest 15. Supervisor diligence: A key factor in executing performance appraisal successfully
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Performance appraisal (PA) has been a controversial practice among human resource professionals regarding its effectiveness, in a way that many organizations (one-third of U.S. companies according to Cappelli and Tavis in Harvard Business Review) have replaced their PA programs with an alternative form of employee feedback. This is while there are still many who advocate the PA programs and believe the issue is due to poor implementation of the practice rather than the practice itself. Since supervisors are the main implementers of human resource practices, the “Achilles heel” of PA may be the degree to which a supervisor is motivated to invest effort in enacting the practice. Put differently, supervisor’s diligence in measuring employee’s performance accurately and providing detailed feedback in the PA process may result in effective execution of PA.
Despite various factors that may work against supervisor diligence – such as accountability (the degree to which the supervisors themselves are held accountable, or not, for enacting the PA process); lenience (when supervisor ratings fail to differentiate among employees to avoid hard feelings and conflict with or among them); organizational politics (for example, when supervisors have “more important things to do” than spending time on evaluating performance accurately) – there are supervisors who take PA seriously and are highly diligent.
The employee’s perception that a supervisor is diligent in implementing the PA process will likely influence his/her reactions to the appraisal process, including the intention to improve. And this intention is the closest trigger of actual behavioral changes.
How does supervisor diligence impact intention to improve?
To address this question, McClendon, Deckop, Han, and Petrucci (2020) conducted a survey study on non-faculty full-time administrative and managerial workforce at a large research university in the U.S.. They showed that supervisor diligence is positively related to motivation to improve, because such diligence sends a signal to employees of the importance of the PA process. This, in turn, may affect their motivation to perform. The result can be explained by Feedback Intervention Theory (FIT), which argues that feedback can change the locus of attention of the recipient. Feedback that directs the attention to the task, as opposed to the self, likely has positive effects, including increased performance. Therefore, a diligent supervisor—one who puts forth the effort to understand the details of the employee's work, will be more able to provide accurate feedback that focuses on the task, that is the kind of feedback necessary for improved performance.
The authors also found that the formal PA meeting plays a prominent role influencing the effects of supervisor diligence on intention to improve. For supervisors, these meetings are an important and unique opportunity to boost employees’ motivation, while employees find them a unique opportunity to engage in discussion with their supervisor, to receive justification for poor ratings or a formal “pat on the back” for good performance independent of any monetary compensation involved.
Infographic created by REAL PAL - Supervisor diligence in performance appraisal
Organizational implications
In order to increase the success rate of PA execution, organizations need to:
Give importance to the execution of PA and pass this mindset on to supervisors.
Increase supervisors’ diligence in PA execution via training, individualized support and accountability systems.
Communicate the relevance of formal PA meetings and ensure that these take place even though they may seem to be like a ritual.
Ensure that supervisors embrace the necessary diligence both in filling the evaluation form and in the formal PA meetings.
In this regard, supervisors need to:
Be prepared for the meeting and leave room for employees to express their voice (see Digest 4 to learn more about the impact of voice in feedback meetings).
Be diligent and provide evidence-based feedback to collaborators in meetings (see Digest 3 for tips on how to give constructive feedback).
React appropriately to collaborators’ responses in formal feedback meetings and tailor communications to their traits (see Digest 5 and Digest 7 on how individual characteristics influence responses to feedback).
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Reference: McClendon, J. A., Deckop, J. R., Han, S., & Petrucci, T. (2020). A study of system execution of performance appraisal. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 00, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsa.12289