The hidden trap most managers miss in performance reviews
June 19, 2009 by Jim GiulianoPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Management, Performance appraisals, Records documentation
Amid cuts in salary and benefits, disgruntled employees are using a new lawsuit weapon, one that’s probably sitting in every supervisor’s file drawer: the standard written performance review.
No, employees aren’t necessarily suing over bad reviews. Instead, they’re using the reviews to support charges of discrimination, retaliation, harassment and a slew of other expensive accusations.
Typical – and expensive – case
Here’s how one typical caseturned on a review and what you – working with your company’s supervisors – can do to help shield against charges like these.
The details: An employee got fired after receiving a string of bad evaluations from her supervisor. Not exactly a rare occurrence. What was rare: She had previously complained about discrimination.
Using the performance reviews as evidence, she won $1 million in damages. The court saw the reviews and her firing as retaliation for those complaints. How did the company and her supervisors get tripped up?
Employment-relations expert Sunil Vatave points out the two danger
signs that get the attention of courts:
- A sudden downward change in review ratings that followed the employee’s complaint. The plaintiff had received several good performance reviews before the group of bad ones. The judge started asking why – which led to the second danger sign.
- Vague review standards too loosely tied to actual performance.
What’s vague? Typically, standard such as “the ability to get along with co-workers” is one. In other words, it’s something that’s hard, if not impossible, to measure .
Vatave’s analysis is that the organization’s HR manager could have prevented the problem and saved the supervisor from creating the mess.
Closing the gaps
First, realize the cure doesn’t involve your haggling with supervisors over setting standards and handling reviews. You wouldn’t want to do that
anyway, and most supervisors would resent it.
You can ask to take a look at performance reviews before they’re official, to make sure they’re in compliance with laws and company standards (while making it clear to supervisors you’re not getting involved
in the actual review).
In your capacity as the HR manager, try to:
- Make sure crucial standards are explained and measurable. It’s reasonable that a supervisor might mistakenly list “getting along with others (nonmeasurable) as a key component, when what’s really meant is “completes team projects on time” (measurable). Pointing out those differences can save a lot of aggravation later on.
- Check that the standards are applied equally to all employees in similar positions. A gap in how standards are applied can become an expensive loophole in court. Judges will want to know why a standard was applied one way to an employee and another way to another employee.
You’re in a great position to spot such gaps, particularly if the workers involved are supervised by different people. Again, you can save a lot of trouble just by pointing out the problems and guiding supervisors .
Cite: Settlegoode v. Multnomah School District 1.
(Sunil Vatave is with the firm Technical Difference, Inc., in Bonsall, CA.)
Tags: preformance reviews, Settlegood v. Multnomah School District, Sunil Vatave, Technical Difference
June 19th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Performance evaluations are often used to retaliate against employees who complain. Often the complaints are avoidable. It is unfortunate that HR or management do no handle small disagreements, which develop into relationship tension, which then develop into serious conflicts and then by this time there is a serious history for complaining. This is avoidable. It seems that HR departments need to work on intervention, and prevention which is all very doable. Most people do not want to spend eight hours in misery fighting with their bosses. I am not being naive when I say that if employees and management would both simply Do Right At Work then more work would be done, more profits would be realized and fewer people would have health related issues. But, that would call for those in power to not abuse that power and authority to lash out, or to target those employees they simply do not like. Egos have already cost this country far too much money which we do not have to spend in this decade of economic tsunami-like conditions. Organizations have the power and when people feel they have no other alternative they will do whatever they have to to survive; it is human instinct. Every one needs to feel that they have some way out, or someone to listen who will be objective. Until we as a society stop abusing our power and authority, greed, cronyism, and play fair and right in the workplace things are going to get worse I am afraid.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:06 am
“What’s vague? Typically, standard such as “the ability to get along with co-workers” is one. In other words, it’s something that’s hard, if not impossible, to measure .”
I don’t find this standard impossible to measure. How many grievances have been filed by co-workers or clients? How many meetings to determine corrective action for rude, immature behavior? Over the last few years, more and more resources are spent dealing with workers who feel they are “right” and “justified” to treat co-workers and clients poorly. They tend to go passive and let things build then aggressive causing turmoil in the office. I know many team projects that are completed on time because the rest of the team has to work overtime to get the job done. Consequentially, that worker next time seems to pick up menial tasks for a project because no one wants them to sabotage the effort and everyone will have to panic in the end.
Your article seems to promote “It’s reasonable that a supervisor might mistakenly list “getting along with others (nonmeasurable) as a key component, when what’s really meant is “completes team projects on time” (measurable).”
I agree, it is important to be “behaviorally specific” when documenting behavior, but I don’t see the benefit for changing the standards. If you have an immature jerk with a low Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and you need to develop them within your organization, you can’t just focus on easy metrics like “deadlines.” Of course, if you do, the worker will state that THEY had the harder jobs assigned to them and that is why they missed any deadlines. I think the key is to document all the meetings with the employee, indicating specifically what happened and what action (behaviorally specific) is expected in the future. The evaluation will then need to evaluate how the employee followed the corrective action since the last evaluation.
If you put little effort into your daily interactions with staff (problem solving and documentation), then don’t expect picking out a few easy, behaviorly specific criteria to document in an evaluation to keep you out of court.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm
WOW Where are people working that get repeated poor evaluations ? As long as I have been in HR, I have never seen a performance eval come across my desk that was flat out “poor” The poor performance gets tended to immediately here and there are never any surprises on an evaluation. Throughout the year, we let you know where you stand and how you’re doing. There is a goals and improvements needed section in our evals that has comments written in it but there is also a comments section where there is always something positive written. Performance evals should not be for blasting employees. Any manager that isn’t fair because of their insecurities toward another employee should not be a manager…Sure I may like one employee better than another (I do not dislike any of my employees) but I am ALWAYS FAIR! (Not in my mind but employees minds as well according to surveys and exit interviews conducted)
If there is any sort of “performance” issue whether it be behaviorial, personality, true performance it needs to be addressed immediately not at a performance eval. believe it or not employees have one of two minds 1) I dont remember or 2) selective remembering
Try to correct behavior that has been going on for months or bringing up some situation that happened 12 weeks ago and it’s alot harder than if you would have addressed it earlier.
I would be asking questions if I saw evals coming through for the same person that were always negative.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:35 am
I agree that there should be no surprises on a performance eval, and I agree that performance “issues” should be dealt with immediately, HOWEVER, that does not mean that they do not also belong on the evaluation. If there have been performance issues during the evaluation period, they absolutely should be noted on the evaluation. It just shouldn’t be a surprise. And hopefully, if the problem(s) have been managed well, then there should also be note of the development plan for improvement and where the employee stands against those metrics.
As far as the vague “getting along with co-workers” I absolutely agree that goals like that are way too vague and unmeasurable. I review evaluations all the time and my biggest complaint is that when I read them, I have no idea HOW to measure success against those types of wishy-washy goals. If the goal is well written there will be some sort of objective measure of success. Why is the goal there? What is its purpose? If there is no concrete measure of success, it is too subjective and not an effective motivator. It also leads to misunderstandings about what exactly is expected and what success means.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
LS, after reading your response, I have to agree with you.
“As far as the vague “getting along with co-workers” I absolutely agree that goals like that are way too vague and unmeasurable.”
Every evaluation form I have seen has that (or very similar) behavior indicator. I have always converted that in my mind to be “Resolves conflicts with co-workers quickly and effectively, involving supervisors when necessary.” This can and is measured based on complaints about and by co-workers, grievances, and passive/aggressive behaviors towards co-workers, etc. It is an important indicator, because you don’t want employees playing managers like parents and getting them overly involved in petty squabbles. You want employees to be responsible and effective in dealing with others.