Organizations undertake performance appraisals to improve individual and corporate efficiency. It is a key component of human resource management in organizations. At individual level, organizations carry out performance appraisals to reward, to identify training needs and for career development. The appraisal process establishes key results that both the individual and the organization must achieve in a given time period. It measures actual performance against set targets thereby aiding the achievement of both individual and overall corporate goals.
Despite these lofty goals however, many employed persons are not happy to go through the annual ritual of performance reviews. This piece discusses five reasons why employees fear performance appraisals.
#1 Performance appraisals expose our individual weaknesses
A properly structured appraisal system helps to evaluate the performance of employees, identifying their strengths and weaknesses. Such appraisal system usually constitute objective basis for promotion, compensation and reward. As a management tool, organizations often use performance appraisals to shape the working habits of their employees. They may also use it as an instrument to sanction non-performance. This should gladden the hearts of hardworking employees. Many employees however see it differently.
The grossly lazy and incompetent employees are usually afraid of any objective appraisal system which tends to expose their weaknesses. Employees in this category often refuse to work hard or seek for ways to improve their careers. They dwell on favours and on the expectation that their influential godfathers will shield and protect them. An objective appraisal system will usually identify such employees, and where necessary take them out of the system.
#2: Biased rating system
Appraisal systems are hardly free from bias. Managers often introduce non-performance related factors such as colour, gender, tribe, language, age, quota etc., into the appraisal system. These factors cloud the appraisal process thereby making objectivity an issue. The appraisal process therefore often results in questionable outcomes. Managerial biases such as likes and dislikes, loyalty and disloyalty and interpersonal relationships also contaminate performance appraisals. A biased rating system discourages and demotivates employees.
In my experience, a number of employees who get scored high in an appraisal process are not always the best performers. Employees who benefit from the skewed appraisal system consider themselves lucky. On the other hand, employees who lose out as a result of the rigged appraisal process have every reason to be afraid of performance appraisals.
#3: Performance Appraisals are time consuming and repetitive
Some appraisal processes involve series of irritating software programmes that are both repetitive and time confusing. Jena McGregor, a contributor to The Washington Post and author of the article “The corporate kabuki of performance reviews”, aptly summarized performance review as a regime of “endless paperwork, the evaluation criteria so utterly unrelated to our jobs, and the simplistic and quota-driven ratings used to label the performance of otherwise complex, educated human beings”.
Some employees see performance appraisals as annual ritual of organized paperwork; tiring, time wasting and confusing. Some others cannot relate the measurement criteria to their actual performance at work. Many organizations commit enormous time and resources annually towards conducting performance reviews, yet the argument has persisted as to whether this actually leads to substantial improvement in individual and corporate efficiency.
New research now also shows that going through an appraisal process has implications for health and safety. According to the researche by David Rock, the author of “Your Brain at Work”, going through the annual ritual of performance appraisal dulls certain parts of the human brain. This probably explains why the process leaves many people apprehensive, angry and deflated.
#4: Creates opportunity for intrigues and power play
For some managers, performance appraisal is an instrument for political horse trading, intrigues and power play. In organizations where this sort of culture exists, managers inadvertently find themselves struggling for limited positions. Also in this sort of organization, influential power brokers decide who gets what. These power brokers strategically place managers in the favoured class in positions to rise above their peers. The skewed system relegates managers who do not belong to the favoured class to inconsequential positions. Managers in this class are considered outsiders and the system ensures they remain subservient to the power brokers.
In these sorts of organizations, competence is less important as a criterion for getting to the top. Being able to play the organizational politics of personal survival and self-preservation is what really matters. The highly competent, less acquiescing and hardworking employees are therefore afraid of performance appraisals because every round of appraisal opens up another opportunity for ingratiation, hypocrisy, nepotism and favouritism.
#5: Poor feedbacks
Feedback is vital to a well-structured performance appraisal system. Employed people desire to know how well they are doing in assigned tasks. Supervisors ought to communicate to their subordinates the outcome of every objective assessment in a timely and regular manner. Feedback communication is considered effective when carried out in a cordial atmosphere, with intention to teach and to correct. When carried out in this manner, a feedback system creates better understanding between workers and their supervisors.
Managers are often uncomfortable with communicating assessment outcomes which they consider unfavourable to affected employees. By withholding unfavourable assessment outcomes from affected employees, managers inadvertently create anxiety, fear and panic among their workers. As a result, many employees now associate performance appraisals with bad news. An unsettled workforce often resorts to rumour mongering and gossips to obtain needed information. Feedback and monitoring are vital to the success of every appraisal system. Without feedback, everyone returns to the old habits once the review is over until the next appraisal period.
