Question:
Our performance-appraisal system is based on “doesn’t meet,”  ”meets” or “exceeds” expectations criteria. We’re thinking of switching to a 1-10 scale that supervisors can use to rate employees.

Any thoughts on whether one system is better than the other?

Answer:
From the standpoint of being able to legally defend an appraisal, the doesn’t meet/meets/exceeds system is generally better. So says James Loots, a labor-relations attorney. But of course you have to have specific criteria on which to base the rating, meaning you have to define what productivity or quality criteria are used for each term.

The problem with a 1-10 scale is that one supervisor may give an employee a “5,” for instance, and another a “6″ but be unable to explain why or may be using shades of difference that depend on “feel” rather than measurable markers.

In that case, you could have a legal problem if the person with the lower score is a minority or pregnant or falls into some other bias-prone category.

When asked the question of why they’re not doing a good job, many managers have a stock reply: “It’s HR’s fault.”

You’ve probably seen it all before.

A supervisor in your organization avoids confronting employees who are slackers, or lets squabbles fester to the point that they threaten the morale and productivity of the group. Maybe you have supervisors who take the nonconfrontational-avoidance approach to the point of hardly ever leaving their offices.

They’re just bad managers, right? Could be. But when the Wall Street Journal surveyed some supervisors who used what could be called “blind-eye management,” a number of them said they behaved that way because they didn’t want to “cause headaches for HR.”

Let’s look at an example of what they mean.

‘Let’s forget it’

Suzie Supervisor walks into the office of the Harry the HR manager and says, “Fred Worker is lazy and has a bad attitude. I’m ready to come down on him hard.”

Harry lets out a sigh. Maybe he complains a little about all the other problems he’s dealing with. He asks Suzie if maybe part of the problem is in the way she deals with Fred. And if Fred is a minority, Harry lowers his voice and warns that firing Fred – or maybe even punishing him – could turn into an administrative and legal nightmare.

Result: Suzie says, “OK, let’s forget it.” She heads back to her office with the firm resolve to let slacker Fred do what he darn well pleases. In an extreme case, Suzie eventually begs out of her supervisor job, and Harry thinks, “She wasn’t a good fit anyway.”

Doing the right thing

All right, so maybe the example is a little dramatic. Most of us want to do the right thing and encourage others to do the right thing. We don’t intentionally push people into becoming bad managers.

But it’s worth listening to managers and taking an approach that makes them feel as if they’re partners with HR, not enemies:

– Give managers their legal and practical options. You may get someone who says, “I want to fire him now!” You know that’s not always do-able, for a lot of reasons, and you should explain why and what the alternative is.

But it’s worth listening to managers and taking an approach that makes them feel as if they’re partners with HR, not enemies:

– Give managers their legal and practical options. You may get someone who says, “I want to fire him now!” You know that’s not always do-able, for a lot of reasons, and you should explain why and what the alternative is.
– Give managers the positives and negatives – and there are always positives and negatives — of any taking action with a problem employee. That places you in a complementary role, without taking over the decision-making role.

– If the manager takes in your advice and makes a decision to action, offer your support and ask if there’s anything you can do to make the process go as smooth as possible.

Some managers are always going to blame somebody else for their inability to deal with problems and problem employees. That’s a given, and it’s partly human nature.

What you’re trying to accomplish is to make sure you’ve done what you need to do to help managers, without discouraging them or making it appear you’re taking over or encouraging them to shirk their responsibilities.