Managers, HR, how do YOU do perf appraisals?

[dcmetrocrab]

This is the first time I've had to do this for my direct reports, and no mentorship nor training was given outside of my supervisor reviewing my handiwork. Going by my own ideal and based on appraisals I've received in the past, I know it tends to be an adhoc exercise in subjectivity. I feel the ideal includes a good balance of subjectivity/objectivity, but when my supervisor read my drafts of my team's assessment, he skewed towards a harder grader than I.

For those who have more experience, how would you grade these two?

A - is in a bad situation project wise. Project is chaotic, no process, not conducive to success for the average employee. Role requires huge amounts of multi-tasking and project coordination while doing work that requires meticulous precision. End result, this person is doing the best that he can, but is burning out and making mistakes.

B - is in a much more structured environment with 100% better project lead and direction. Has nearly triple the amount of experience as A, is independent, a subject matter expert, but communication and social skills are lacking to the point I have to do a LOT of damage control.

A pulls way more hours than B out of project necessity, sacrificing weekends, all nighters, canceling personal obligations, all with good attitude. Has been in lead positions before and has leadership potential. Has a 70min commute.

B works a straight 40hr/wk, cannot multitask AT ALL, has a hot temper, will never make it in a leadership role nor does he have the desire. Walks to work.

A's morale is much lower than B's. I wanted to acknowledge and reward A's dedication, so I wanted to give both the same rating, but my supervisor thought otherwise and rated A lower. Keep in mind we are not giving raises this year. Was I being too subjective? I could see why my supervisor thought commute was irrelevent, but she also thought the amount of overtime incurred and the project intensity didn't matter which I thought was outright unfair. If B had been in A's role, he would have failed miserably and quit.

[shanendoah]

I agree that you need to stop trying to compare these two employees. You need to look at each indiviudally, their job performance related to their skill set and situation. How the other is doing matters not one little bit.
Your boss is right, commute time should not be taken in to account when it comes to performance ratings. Where they live is a personal choice and they chose this job (or chose their home) knowing full well what that was.

My company makes things a little easier by only having 3 options: Exceeds (as in more than 2/3s of the time), Meets, or Doesn't Meet expectations. People who exceed expectations 50% of the time and people who barely meet expectations are given the same rating. (There is flexibility in performance pay increases, so they don't get the same raise.) But they DO NOT have the same performace appraisal experience.
Regardless of rating, you need to make sure that you sit down with each of your staff and go through the situation. Make sure you highlight their strengths and when mentioning their challenges, ask what they think the two of you can do to help with those next year.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I've never done one but when I had apprasials it was limited to my job duties/performance and then certain "core values" the university expected me to have.

Nothing was EVER mentioned about another employee in the lab. The apprasial had to stick to just me and my job.

[Abby Normal]

If you can't give them the same rating, I would decide their rating by who you would choose to keep if you had to get rid of one. Commute should not be a factor

A. Who works hard, but admittedly is burning out due to stress of a high level project.

B. Who does the minimum and doesn't have the desire to work

To me it's like saying the kids who is in remedial math getting an A is a better student than a kid in the highest level getting a C.

[iono1]

It may not be your fault, but your company is being mismanaged at some level. A should not be expected to do this task alone. If your company can't afford to move another employee into the task to help him out, they shouldn't have taken on the project in the 1st place. Either the guy is staying on his own time, or the company is paying overtime. If it's paying overtime, then they are wasting their money and his time. Your company is expecting too much out of 1 position and needs to rethink this entire project and the methodology of job assignments.

[Tennesseer]

dcmetrocrab-how large of a company is this (employee wise)? If you have an HR department ask them if there are any standardize employee evaluation forms. What evalution forms were used by the previous managers/supervisors of your direct reports in the past? Were there ever any performance standards put in place?

The worst thing you can do is evaluate an employee by purely subjective measurements. Whether you know it or not, you (we) are probably biased in one way or another.

If you cannot get any help within your company, seek some help outside your company. Here is an example from the HR department at UC Berkeley. Review their forms and see how you they wrote them to help evaluate employees.
careercompass.berkeley.edu/perfmgmt/resources/evalforms.html

[ihearyou2]

Bingo to what a couple of posters mentioned. At the end of the day(everyone loves that line) its about individual results. Each employee needs to stand and be evaluated on what they accomplished. With that said the extenuating circumstances for each should be noted. The challenges and the hard work of A and the bad attitude of B in the appropriate spots on the eval.

As far as working long hours if they are truly valid then someone needs to get in there and be a real supervisor and get the proper staffing for the project. Having a person flounder and work hard with minimal results does no one any good.

[bobbysgirl]

If this is the company's way of creating a measurement of an employee's performance, I would say they are getting what they have created. Is there no form that corresponds with the job title and expectations? A narrative is not impartial, it is created using opinion. There should be no comparative verbiage, but rather a scale that is explicit in it's meaning.

Job Performance

Comes to work at appointed time. always is late on occasion, with valid reason yada yada yada

Each point should be clear and concise. A small area at the end of the form for a short narrative is appropriate. I never wrote anything unless it was positive. HR knew this meant I was not a happy director at this point. By the way, it was my task to create the forms. Hope this is helpful.

In this state a company would get sued if evaluations were written the way you demonstrated.

[dcmetrocrab]

Appreciate the feedback. To be clear, I never compared the performances of the two against each other when I did the appraisal nor was anything subjective mentioned. The part that surprised me was my supervisor not acknowledging the fact that no one would do well in A's role.

Back story, this is a small young company. The appraisal process and form has been rewritten 3 times in the last two years. In the same period, we have had 3 exec level changes and the associated management shuffle. Some people have had 5 supervisor changes in a single year.

The above fuels my bias. The team is severely understaffed after multiple layoffs, expectations are unreasonable, hiring freeze is in place. I have no carrots to keep people from leaving. No raises, overtime, comp time, zero. The only thing I feel I can do is show acknowledgment and appreciation of their efforts at the review (which I did) and to not ding them hard for something out of their control. (attempted and failed)

[TD2K]

I've never been impressed with any sort of appraisal system I've had. It's a necessary evil that I go through each year and is pretty much a waste of effort. If you are going to do written appraisals make it mandatory that you have to have specific examples to back up comments for critical feedback.