Forums

It's performance evaluation season at my company. I have a direct who "hates" the self-rating (1 to 10) portion of our evaluation form. He feels that this should just be a reviewer section.

 
He thinks he can't go below a certain number on the scale or he will look like an idiot to upper management (who will be in the performance review meeting). He feels he can't go too high because he sees his own flaws.
 
Does anyone have advice on how I can encourage him that rating himself is a valuable part of the evaluation?
 
thanks

Kevin1's picture

 Hi there.

If he has a plan for how he is addressing any weaknesses or exploiting any strengths, then he looks very organised and professional to upper management.

Kind regards

kev

 

mark_odell's picture

 

Get him to listen to - http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/11/completing-self-appraisals

 

--

Chief Executive, Connect Support Services Ltd. - London based cloud & traditional IT services for SMEs
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/markodell100 - https://twitter.com/mark_odell

leanne's picture
Licensee Badge

I hate it too.

I get myself through it by reminding myself that this is my opportunity to do a couple things:

1) Prompt my boss to think more carefully about a category and whether I've improved in it from last year - if my rating differs from theirs, then they may look at it and go 'what's going on in her head that makes her think...? Let me go look at her write-up of what she's done again...oh, yes, X and Y, I forgot about those, and they do kinda balance out Z'.

2) Allow my boss to correct me when I am overestimating in an area. If I think the area is above average, and my boss thinks it's not, then this is an easy way for us to look at it and say 'ok, what are our expectations and where are they divergent, or are our evaluations divergent?'

Of course, to be most useful, my boss has to actually use the self-ratings that way.

brianwidmer's picture
Training Badge

I tried something new this year. We use a 4-point scale, and I required everyone to have a certain number of 1s, 2s, 3s, and 4s.

It really helped with skill differentiation, and people didn't feel like idiots giving themselves a 1 since they had to anyway.

Plus, I got some great input to roll into development plans.

 

 

 

 

skagen23's picture

Thanks for the input everybody. We made it through the evals.

I appreciate the different approaches people are taking. The idea of the 4-point scale is pretty interesting. I don't see changing our internal rating system anytime soon.

At this point I'm glad we have something in place. A few years ago there was hesitancy to even do yearly evaluations.

Chris

edzaun's picture

 Hi Brian,

In my experience, forced ranking is a mistake. It works for sporting events where there is always a first place and always a last but when applied to people and the skills required to perform a function, it leads to frustration and discontent.

People show always be ranked, or rank themselves, against a standard. This is usually a job description or stated metrics. Yes, there are always things we all can do better and the rule about never letting perfect be the enemy of good applies here. It takes ever more effort to get smaller incremental changes the higher you go on the performance scale.

With forced ranking, you end up with people downplaying the things they are good at. When ranking against others, you always have people who receive a lower ranking than they deserve because there is a limited number of highs and acceptable performers are forced into poor ranks.

If you use it strictly as a tool to help people identify where they might be able to improve is fine and you have to be careful. Some people cannot stand a low rank on their review. The low rank is then ignored because it has to be there and they will randomly pick something they do not like to do for the low number.

 

Ed Zaun

DiSC Profile 7-3-1-2