Conducting Appraisal

Conducting Effective Appraisal Meetings TABLE OF CONTENTS

Section I

Welcome

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Section II

Getting Started

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Section III

Getting Down to Business

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Section IV

Appendix

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TRAINING GOALS Conducting Effective and Comfortable Appraisal Meetings Appraisals are a way of life for organizations such as the University of South Dakota. They can be very beneficial because they tie individual job performance to USD’s overall goals. They also provide USD with useful data by identifying talented employees who are important to the University’s future as well as identifying developmental needs where productivity can be improved. In addition, performance appraisals convey the message that employees are accountable for their performance. And finally, they provide a vehicle for rewarding good performance with pay. Yet despite these benefits, if you’re like many managers, you may not eagerly anticipate giving your employees appraisal interviews. In fact, you may be tempted to delay the interview or even avoid it altogether. Here are just a few of the reasons why: ¾ Appraisals involve confrontation because it requires facing conflict and dealing with disagreement. ¾ Appraisals require an investment in time to plan and conduct them. ¾ Appraisals often lack a systematic format which ensures that all pertinent issues are covered so that conclusions can be accurately drawn. ¾ Appraisals are often viewed as futile because it’s your word against your employees’. In the first Performance Management training module, you learned how to plan for strong performance by developing performance goals with your employees. During the second module, you learned how to provide ongoing informal feedback about the performance goals throughout the performance cycle. And in the third training session, you learned how to rate employees fairly based on how well they performed each goal. In this final training session, you will learn how to conduct the appraisal meeting with your employees and discuss your ratings with them. You will gain the practical skills you need to make the appraisal meeting easier and more comfortable all the way around.

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SPECIFICALLY, YOU’LL LEARN HOW TO:

¾ Structure the meeting so that both positive and negative information regarding performance is sufficiently addressed. ¾ Ensure the employee actively participates in the appraisal meeting. ¾ Develop your employee by planning future performance and areas for growth.

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Purpose of the Appraisal Meeting Closing the Loop and Charting the Course The appraisal meeting closes the loop on the employee’s past performance and charts a new course for the coming year. There are two main purposes of the appraisal interview, and those two purposes often conflict with each other. ¾ The first purpose is to develop employees and give feedback about their performance so they can continue to improve in their work. ¾ The second is to evaluate employees’ performance so they can receive a merit increase that reflects their levels of performance.

Past Performance Future Performance

The problem is that when you evaluate an employee, it makes him or her defensive, which in turn may make it more difficult to enter into a discussion of his or her weaknesses and areas for improvement. For this reason, it is difficult to make the most of the appraisal meeting as both a developmental and an evaluation tool. Merit increases for your employees are based on performance appraisal scores. This means that employees will naturally want to emphasize their strengths and will be anxious about their raises. It will be your challenge as a manager to conduct developmental interviews while being sensitive to your employees’ concern about the ultimate consequences of the appraisals - their raises.

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Develop employees Evaluate employees’ performance

In a developmental appraisal, your goal is to provide both feedback and ideas to employees -- feedback about what they have done over the last year and ideas about ways they might improve or maintain their performance. This includes identifying training needs as well as other kinds of developmental needs, such as having an employee work with different kinds of people at the University or on a variety of projects. Even though your appraisal will be developmental, it still serves the purpose of evaluating the employee for a merit increase. It is difficult for a manager to act as a judge and then, minutes later, turn into a coach and counselor. From the employee’s perspective, 5

it is difficult to hear your ideas about development while worrying about being evaluated. Naturally, the appraisal meeting should not be the only opportunity to provide performance feedback to employees. Employees should receive feedback throughout the performance cycle. On the day of the performance appraisal, they should not receive any surprises. Employees should come to the appraisal meeting knowing pretty well what you think of their work. The conversation should reinforce and reflect previous coaching sessions. If you have coached your employees throughout the performance cycle, both you and they will feel more comfortable with the meeting process.

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USD’s Appraisal Process Each time you conduct an appraisal meeting with an employee, you’ll follow a specific sequence of events.

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Adequate Planning And Preparation Without preparation by both supervisor and employees, the full advantages of the meeting are not realized. You must be prepared to discuss any setbacks, failures or unachieved goals. Your employees must also prepare for the evaluation by completing the self-appraisal and by being ready to discuss both positive and negative aspects of their performance.

Appraising Employee Performance Relative To Goals

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Your employees want and need to know how you formally rated their performance over the past year. You need to not only provide the ratings, but also discuss the reasons for the ratings. You should support your reasons with actual examples that stay focused on performance-related behaviors.

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Planning For Future Performance When the focus of the appraisal meeting changes to future performance, your role must change from one of a judge to one of an advisor. You need to develop action plans with your employees that provide your employees with strategies to both improve their performance and pursue additional skill areas.

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Before You Begin the Appraisal Process

It is helpful that you keep the following in mind before you begin the appraisal process: ¾ Employees want to improve. ¾ Employees know how to do their job and are sufficiently innovative to find ways to improve their performance. ¾ Supervisors and managers have a stake in employees’ careers, not just in their daily performance. ¾ Rewards are based not only on work quality and productivity, but also on internal and external customer satisfaction.

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Planning and Preparing for the Appraisal Process Preparation by Supervisors The first step is to give the employee sufficient notification of the date of the meeting. The meeting will seem less important if the appraisal is delayed or postponed. Therefore, establish a time that will be convenient for both of you. Also make sure that you allow sufficient time for you to rate your employees and for your employees to complete their self-appraisal. The second step is to provide your employees with the appraisal form and have them complete the self-appraisal section. Once you have received and reviewed their self-appraisals, you must complete the evaluation section of the form by rating your employees’ performance. As mentioned in the introduction of this manual, the Rater Bias module provided you with techniques to rate your employees fairly based on notes from your coaching sessions. To make sure you’ll be fair, you should reread the rater bias information in that module, follow up on other sources of objective data and review your coaching notes and the selfappraisal. Based on these sources of information, you will rate the employee’s performance on each goal. Immediately prior to meeting, review the appraisal form containing the ratings that you completed for your employee. In addition to the ratings, consider points to discuss concerning the employee’s future performance. Also note any discrepancies that exist between your ratings and the employee’s self-appraisal. Be prepared to address these discrepancies in the meeting. Finally, it is a good idea to review the communication--skills section of the Coaching module. Practice paraphrasing techniques and using "I" statements. In order to be optimally prepared for the interview, select the exact words to use for introductory statements and to confront defensiveness. Anticipate problems and be ready to provide examples to support and illustrate your points.

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Preparation by Employees While employees will hopefully know their supervisors’ opinions of their performance before going into the meeting, they may feel uncertain about what will actually take place in the meeting in terms of format and process. Therefore, it is advisable to provide them a preparation list that delineates all the documents that they should review and the developmental issues that they should come prepared to discuss. A copy of this list can be found in the Appendix. At the same time that they are provided the preparation list, employees should also be given the official form and instructed to complete the self-appraisal section. Now, all that awaits is the moment of truth -- conducting the appraisal meeting.

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Conducting the Appraisal Meeting The meeting should take place in a private area without interruptions. To conduct the meeting successfully, break the session into three parts and understand what you want to accomplish in each part. The interview session should consist of an opening, a discussion of performance ratings and a discussion of future performance. The session flows best if you follow this order.

Opening Performance Ratings Future Performance

Opening The opening of the meeting should put the employee at ease as quickly as possible. During the opening, you’ll make some small talk and demonstrate some interest in the employee as a person. You can help to create a comfortable and calm environment by sitting next to the employee rather than across a desk. The employee is probably quite anxious at this point; therefore, you should try to show empathy and to help the employee relax. The most important element in putting the employee at ease however, is discussing your approach to the appraisal openly and letting the employee know that you plan to make this a mutual conversation. Discussion of Performance Ratings The most critical part of the discussion of performance ratings is organizing it for optimum effectiveness. Let’s take a look at a logical progression of steps:

Ask The Employee To Review His Or Her Self-Appraisal As The First Step Of Your Discussion You do this by saying, "I’d like to start by hearing you talk about your accomplishments over the last year. What things did you do that you’re really proud of?" The employee should elaborate on the accomplishments he or she detailed in the self appraisal. 10

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Ask What The Employee Would Like To Improve This is done simply by asking, "Where did you feel you could have done better?"

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Offer Support For Those Areas For Improvement Ask the employee: " As you try to work on that in the upcoming year, what would make it more likely for you to be successful? What can USD do? What can I do?" Throughout the first three steps, you will use your active listening skills.

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Express Your Expectations At this point the floor is yours. It’s time for you to share with the employee what your expectations were and how the employee did compared to your expectations. Using "I" statements, begin with something like: "Now, I’d like to express to you what I was looking for and how I saw your performance." The best way to do this is to present the evaluations to the employee and encourage the employee to take ample time to read and understand the ratings and comments.

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Review Each Goal Provide feedback about the employee’s performance, using specific examples. In many cases the employee will have already said something about this area in the first part of the meeting. It is important that you relate your comments back to the employee’s comments. For example, you might say: "You said earlier that you were pleased with your efficiency in getting the new system installed. I had focused on the number of bugs still in the system when we started using it. That was a real problem for me because so much work had to be redone. But I agree with you that you got it done more quickly than I expected. I think I would rather have it done a bit more slowly and have fewer errors."

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Then tell the employee what overall rating you gave him or her for that performance goal. The rating must reflect the employee’s performance relative to the goal. Therefore, the examples should focus solely on the performance goal. If performance has been acceptable, you should compliment the employee. However, you should not offer empty compliments in an attempt to buffer negative feedback. Also avoid sandwiching compliments between criticisms. It is important that you present an accurate and fair assessment in a supportive and non-punitive manner. While the tone of the appraisal is intended to be positive, remember you still have to make the hard choice of evaluating your employees. Many of your employees will receive a "Meets Expectations" level. It will be helpful if you clarify to the employee that you see performance at this level as positive, as what you expect. You can also discuss with the employee what he or she would need to do to be rated as an "Outstanding" or "Exceptional" but be careful to keep your word next year if the person performs according to your expectations. Ask The Employee To Verbally React To The Appraisal Ratings If there is disagreement, it is important for the supervisor to be patient and try to understand what the employee is feeling. In fact, you should repeat what the employee has said so there will be clarity of understanding. Only when both parties understand one another is it possible to discuss and resolve differences. Negative feedback can provide opportunities for improvement, and conveying this is something an effective rater must learn to practice. Although the best situation would be for the appraisal meeting to proceed smoothly, there is the possibility that the employee will not agree with the appraisal. Do not try to stop the employee from venting frustration. In many cases, it is prudent to say nothing in response, but rather just listen. If the person becomes increasingly rude or abusive, you may end the meeting and reschedule it for the next day.

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The most important aspect of the discussion of ratings is the exchange of viewpoints. Maintaining this communication is essential to both job improvement and to building a strong working relationship between the employee and supervisor. Therefore, the main thing to keep in mind is to promote and encourage dialog. If there is no verbal communication, distrust and resentment may emerge. The employee may readily agree with negative feedback quickly in order to deflect attention from the issue. You will need to recognize this tactic and control the dialog. Similarly, an employee may also use tangents in an effort to avoid uncomfortable discussions. Again, you should recognize the dynamics and retain control of the meeting. An employee who is criticized may seek justification in comparisons to others in the department. Do not be drawn into discussions concerning other behaviors and other employees. Also, do not let a persuasive employee force the alteration of an honest opinion rendered in good faith. This does not mean that your ratings need to be set in stone. If the employee provides support for his or her opinion and presents information that you had not considered, a modification of the rating may be warranted. Discussion Of Future Performance The discussion of future performance is very important for summarizing the evaluation aspect and helping both of you close the meeting in a positive fashion.

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Discuss Development Use all the discussion you and the employee have had so far to discuss employee development and your role in supporting that development Be sure again that the approach is to assign mutual responsibility for the employee’s success -- the employee’s efforts and your use of USD’s systems and resources. At the same time, be clear that it is your responsibility to set stretch goals for employees and expect them to achieve them. It is also your responsibility to identify those employees who have the most potential. With that in mind, it is important to recognize that many employees fall into the "Meets Expectations" rating category and they deserve respect even though they may not be superstars.

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In order to encourage the employee to participate in the development discussion, you may want to ask the following questions: ¾ What are your career goals? ¾ How do think these goals support this department’s and the University’s overall goals? ¾ What additional skills do you need to realize these goals? ¾ What help do you need from others to achieve these goals? ¾ How can we monitor your progress toward these goals?

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Plan For Next Year It is probably most convenient if you use the time that you are together to plan for the coming year. You both can talk generally about how you can use your experiences of the past year to improve your relationship and the employee’s work performance for the coming review period.

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Do The Paperwork Following the discussion, you and the employee will complete the Training and Development Plan section. A copy of the Training and Development Plan may be found in the Appendix. In addition to the development goals for next year, make sure you indicate your responsibilities as well as the employee’s in order to accomplish goals. In this section, you should summarize the development discussion and restate the extent and timing of your support. Determine what, if any, additional meetings and follow-up sessions are to be held. Then both of you must sign the form indicating that the appraisal has been completed.

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Request Feedback Finally, ask if the employee has any remaining thoughts or feelings. Discuss those, using active listening. If the employee says no, indicate that you would be glad to talk about the appraisal if he or she has any second thoughts during the next couple of weeks.

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Summary Your role as supervisor in the performance appraisal is critical. Providing consistent feedback and winning the trust of the employee by honest and open verbal exchange are determining factors in the overall success of The University of South Dakota’s performance management system for non-faculty exempt staff. The following are effective communication techniques useful in the appraisal meeting: ¾ Let the employee do most of the talking. ¾ Make a special effort to listen. ¾ Use brief comments such as "I see" or "Uh-huh" to indicate that you’re listening. ¾ Maintain good eye contact. ¾ Ask open-ended questions. ¾ Match your words with appropriate facial and body language. ¾ Paraphrase to ensure understanding. ¾ Use silent pauses to encourage them to discuss sensitive points. ¾ Emphasize points of agreement. ¾ Give examples based on behaviors relating to performance goals. Knowing the employees and being aware of their strengths and weaknesses, coupled with a sincere desire to create job satisfaction, are ways in which you can decrease the amount of negative experiences associated with the performance appraisal.

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Employee Preparation List 1.

Review the performance appraisal form.

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Complete the self-appraisal section of the appraisal form and return it to your supervisor.

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Review the report of your last performance review. Be prepared to discuss goals you achieved, and those that were not accomplished. Prepare a list of development goals.

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Write down, or be prepared to discuss the following: ¾ What do you think has been your most valuable contribution(s) to your department this past year? ¾ Considering the goals on the Appraisal Form, what would you have preferred to have done better? ¾ What’s keeping you from reaching your full potential? ¾ What frustrates you, and how can this be alleviated? ¾ What are your career goals or interests? ¾ What can your supervisor do to help you achieve your goals or interests?

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Employee Self-Appraisal Instructions This page to be completed by employee prior to the evaluation of his or her performance. Accomplishments Looking over the goals described in this appraisal form, what would you say are your key accomplishments this year?

Opportunities for Improvement Considering the goals on this Appraisal Form, what would you have preferred to do better?

Training and Development Plan Describe your professional development goals and how you plan to reach these goals. Also identify how your supervisor can assist in your development.

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Employee Training and Development Plan Training and Development Plan Describe the ways in which the employee can develop his or her skills to better meet his or her performance and career goals.

Supervisor’s Role Describe how you can assist the employee.

Employee Comments Please provide feedback regarding the proposed development plan as well as the appraisal process and rating.

Signatures Employee*

Date

Supervisor

Date

* My signature signifies that I have had a performance appraisal and read this form. It does not necessarily imply agreement with the content.

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