I'd like to add fuel to this dialog about "rating" and appraisals. Last
year I was part of a cross-functional team of four assigned with creating
a booklet for managers and supervisors on How to Complete Employee
Performance Appraisals.
In no way do I wish to be an apologist for what Deming would ostensibly
consider unseemly organizational behavior. But I had a task, and tried to
make the best of it.
Although the booklet was in Microsoft Word (Mac) format, replete with
tables, I did cut and paste below a sampling of one of the sections,
Quality of Work. I want everyone who reads this to notice that rating is
not simply sucking a number out of the thumb. We on the team believed
that our choice of words reflected a thinking process on the part of the
reviewer and employee. We were striving to define behavior of the
goof-off and the exemplar.
But first, from from page one of the booklet come these two paragraphs:
"No Surprises
The evaluation you write should contain no surprises, but rather reinforce
the communication you have had with the employee during the period since
the last performance review."
""EXPLAIN"
In each section of the seven sections containing the rating scale, the
section definition ends with the word "Explain:". This is your place to
write factual, substantiating items which support your evaluation.
INCORRECT: "Has good job knowledge." This doesn't add anything to your
review.
CORRECT: (example) "Josephine has mastered not only AS/400 O/E skills, but
Fusion report generation and some programming language." These are
facts."
Now, on page 2 of our instructions to reviewers, we have this matrix to
assist in rating (please note the matrix table boxes do not translate
electronically into my mail program) :
"Quality of work is the ability to complete the assigned job in an
accurate, error free manner. It is also the extent to which work meets
the established quality standards, as in our Quality Management System,
for example.
The table below describes each level of the 1-to-5 rating.
Rating (1-5) Text Description
1 Work is usually incomplete or inaccurate.
Poor attention to detail; too many errors.
Work requires additional checking.
Shows little regard for quality.
Repeats mistakes.
2 Work is sometimes incomplete or inaccurate.
Sometimes careless, does not always pay close attention to detail.
Work needs to be checked on occasion.
Makes more than average number of mistakes.
Does not repeat mistakes often.
3 Work is generally complete and accurate.
Maintains acceptable level of quality.
Pays close attention to detail.
Work does not need to be checked.
Learns from mistakes.
4 Work is always complete and accurate.
Maintains above average level of quality.
Points out quality problems
Capable of checking other's work.
Makes very few mistakes.
5 Very good attention to details.
Active role in continuous quality improvement.
Notices potential problems before they happen (Preventive Action).
Rarely makes mistakes.
Work is generally beyond what is expected."
Currently, I have been given the personal task of bringing acute awareness
of TQ principles, tools and activities into the appraisal forms for
managers and lead people/supervisors. This is in keeping with the
deployment of TQ principles into our organization which is undergoing a
cultural change in light of the corporate challenge to implement TQ
practices for team work and problem solving for the sake of the customer.
I hope this tinder ignites further discussion. Perhaps evaluation of
others, which we are somewhat prone to, is not as black and white as it
might seem when we dig into philosophical positions. Whadayathink?
-- Barry Mallis bmallis@markem.com