By MARIE WILSON
Q. I am part of a high-performing team in a mid-sized, fast-growing, high-technology company. We are divided into product divisions, each with a sales team.
Our company has done well, mostly because our sales team pulled out all the stops last year and went well over our sales targets and marketing objectives.
When we got our performance feedback, our manager was complimentary.
He wrote long reports about how we had all worked long hours, been innovative, and pulled together as a team (which doesn't happen often in a competitive sales culture).
When he handed out ratings, though, we were told that we had to be rated against one another (1 to 5 in a team of 5) as that was company policy, and that even though the lowest person in our group achieved more than the highest in some other groups, that the rankings would govern our pay rises and, to a lesser extent, our career, since the company database holds just the ratings, not our achievements or our feedback.
We have gone from feeling like heroes and wanting to give it our all, to feeling like we would have been better off not making the effort. What do you think of this practice?
A. If organisations want high performance, then they need to provide honest, accurate feedback both informally and formally.
Focusing on performance strengths, and providing recognition for them, is absolutely paramount.
I'm glad to hear that your manager provided that all-important positive feedback, but I share your concerns about the ranking process.
Organisations require ranking because they believe it will make managers make tough decisions about who their best employees are, and not duck the responsibility of recognising and managing performance difficulties.
Ranking can indeed help managers to do this, but the cost is the accuracy of the feedback, the creation of artificial distinctions, and destruction of teamwork by pitting team members against each other.
Research by the Corporate Leadership Council has noted that ranking was one of the factors that most predicted a decrease in performance.
I'm sure that's not what your organisation is hoping for as a result of their performance-appraisal process.
The performance-appraisal process can be fraught with conflicts between the desire to give positive feedback and the need to link performance to financial rewards and/or development opportunities.
The best way to resolve this is with clear performance expectations and standards that everyone recognises and understands; then you either meet the standard or not, without regard to who else has.
This may require even greater care in dealing with teams. Teams are interdependent with regards to performance, and recognising only individual performance cuts across this.
Edward Deming, the father of quality management, was opposed to individual performance appraisals for just this reason; a co-operative environment can be destroyed by competition for high rankings and/or rewards.
At a minimum, there should be a means of recognising team performance, as well as the individual. Ranking is not the way to accomplish this.
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Q. I have sent in a job application for a mid-level role. It's now past the close-off date and I haven't heard back.
Would it seem like I was desperate if I rang to find out if they had already made the shortlist and I missed out?
A. Since you know when shortlisting was to occur, and that date has passed plus several days, I think you are fine to drop an email or phone to find out if you have been shortlisted.
You can recognise the possibility of delay in your inquiry, for example, "I realise that the process may have been delayed from the initial target of last Thursday, but I was wondering if you could tell me if shortlisted candidates have been selected yet?"
If you are shortlisted, you can arrange an interview time, if not you can ask for feedback, and if they still haven't decided, you can ask for a likely time by which you will know.
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