The document discusses fair approaches to assessing employee performance. It recommends (1) agreeing in advance on what activities and tasks will be assessed, (2) basing assessments only on solid, undisputed facts of performance rather than opinions, and (3) discussing self-assessments with employees to understand their perspectives before making evaluations. Fair assessments avoid flawed perceptions, compare performance objectively to agreed-upon standards, and seek input from multiple sources to achieve accurate, unbiased evaluations.

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Assessing Performance
ASSESSING
PERFORMANCE
How to be fair when measuring performance
MTL: The Professional Development Programme

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Assessing Performance
Attribution: All images are from sources where a Creative Commons license exists for commercial use. All icons are on subscription
from thenounproject. All clipart is from free sources. The MTL Professional Development Programme is copyright of Manage Train
Learn.
Assessing
Performance
Introduction: Most people at work like to know how well they're doing. When we're
told we're doing a good job by someone whose opinion we respect, it makes the
effort worthwhile. Nor do most of us mind when we look at the less successful areas
of our work, especially if we believe that someone else is prepared to help us deal
with them. However, when assessments are unilateral, judgmental and unfairly
critical, the whole process of appraisal is undermined and may be destroyed.

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Assessing Performance
1. AGREE
WHAT YOU’RE
ASSESSING
The starting point for an assessment scheme is to
agree with your appraisees what activities and
tasks you are reviewing. Nothing is more
contentious than picking activities that the
appraisee doesn't perform well or those they
don't consider important. The key to selecting
these activities is to start with those that are
most important in the job, ie most important for
the organisation to achieve its aims. Surveys
have found that when an organisation carries out
appraisal infrequently, such as only once or twice
a year, there is often a discrepancy between
what the manager thinks is important in the job
and what the employee thinks. That's why it is
essential to clarify differences before you start
the assessment.
Focus on important work areas not unimportant ones
Flickr attribution: /psc49/10043984966/

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Assessing Performance
12 Features ofAssessment Schemes
1
A summary of the
purpose of the job eg
bellboy
2
A list of key result areas
and outcomes
3
A list of core
competencies and skills
4
A guideline to each level
of performance from
"poor" to "excellent"
8
Scoring by the line
manager and possibly
others
7
Scoring by the appraisee
6
A period to be reviewed
5
A system of scoring, eg 1
to 10, "excellent" to
"poor"
9
A meeting to discuss the
respective assessments
10
Final agreement on the
assessments
11
Possibly, salary or bonus
awards based on the
assessments
12
An appeals procedure if
appraisees are not happy
The purpose of an assessment-based appraisal scheme is to score or mark people. This may be as part of a
bonus or salary scheme. The following features are normally part of such a scheme.

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Assessing Performance
2. USE SOLID
FACTS
Fair assessments are based on the facts of
performance, not opinion, assumptions or
hearsay. It is not always easy to get the facts,
especially if the review takes place a long time
after the performance or if events are disputed.
There are 3 main ways to get to the facts:
accurate reporting; using the mnemonic, UCARE;
and counting and comparing.
Get facts as opinions may be biased
Flickr attribution: /criminalintent/2229624218/

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Assessing Performance
How toAssess There are four "don'ts" when assessing people’s performance at work.
4. Don't make fixed
assessments that sound like
condemnations, eg "He's a
poor presenter". Instead,
phrase your assessments in
their development context,
eg "He's not yet achieved
self-confidence in
presentations."
2. Don't compare people
to one another, to other
people doing the same job
or to yourself. Instead,
compare them to the
objectively-measured
standards of the job.
3. Don't make assessments
based on your own
prejudices about people.
Instead, measure their
performance.
1. Don't judge people
against an ideal standard.
None of us can achieve
perfection. Instead, measure
people against group
standards that you have
agreed or standards that you
believe they can achieve
themselves.

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Assessing Performance
3. REPORT
ACCURATELY
One of the best ways to carry out an assessment
is to observe the employee carrying out the job.
If you do this, bear in mind that employees can
be put under extra stress when being watched.
An alternative is to gather reports in the form of
narratives from those involved in the activity.
This simply records as accurately as possible
what took place, how it was done, and the
outcomes. The narrative then becomes the basis
of how well the employee performed.
You cannot assess performance properly unless you see it
Flickr attribution: /vancouverfilmschool/6046796929/

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Assessing Performance
4. USE UCARE
FACTS
If you operate an appraisal scheme which rates
people, the chances of disagreement are lessened if
you stick to the facts of performance. You can do this
by showing U CARE.
"U CARE" is a mnemonic for facts which are...
U - Undisputed, ie there is no disagreement
about the evidence collected.
C - Complete, ie they show the full picture.
A - Accurate, ie they are correct in what is
reported.
R - Relevant, ie they relate to the key result areas
of the job and the performance criteria of the
job.
E - Explicit, ie these are facts which are clear and
unambiguous.
When you stick to U CARE facts, there is less room
for argument and disagreement and more chance
for progress in the appraisal.
Start with the undisputed facts
Flickr attribution: /pedrosimoes7/2394843377/

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Assessing Performance
Rarely, If Ever, Late
If you want to build trust with your appraisees, you must be honest
and truthful, even if it runs counter to the way your organisation
runs assessments.
Bruna Martinuzzi, founder of Clarion Enterprises, recalls an
assessment from a former boss who wrote, "rarely, if ever, late",
under the "Attendance" heading.
When Bruna pointed out that she had
never been late throughout the review
period, her boss replied that he couldn't
give her a 100% rating as the system did
not allow for perfect scores and head office
might perceive it as a biased rating. He
added that, if he gave her a perfect score
on one category, this would question the
veracity of all his other assessments.
She never trusted that boss again.

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Assessing Performance
5. COUNT AND
COMPARE
One way to assess performance is to count and
compare. This means making a count of what
happened in a task and comparing it to the
outcomes or standards you expected. So, if, say,
an employee was being assessed on their
customer service skills, you could record the
number of questions they used against the
number of statements and compare this to what
a competent person would use in the same
situation. This is the basis of rating.
Use a standard that you can measure
Flickr attribution: /andymag/10947544804/

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Assessing Performance
BARS BARS stands for Behaviourally Anchored Rating Schemes. These are schemes that aim to avoid
some of the pitfalls of criteria-scoring schemes.
This is how BARS work.
1. One set of managers looks at each job and identifies the key
aspects. For the position of retail manager, these might include
handling customer complaints; maintaining stock levels; and
meeting accounting deadlines.
3. Each job holder is then rated
at one of the nine levels using
the anchors as guidelines.
2. A different set of managers identifies up
to nine anchors of behaviour for each
criterion. These are descriptions of how the
job might be done at each of nine different
performance levels.

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Assessing Performance
6. AVOID
FLAWED
PERCEPTIONS
There are three common ways that you can
assess unfairly. First, by stereotyping people, eg
"typical accountant", "what I'd expect of a
woman". The second is to draw conclusions
based on limited facts, eg "oh, he always
behaves like that". And thirdly, emphasising one
feature so that the person looks exceptionally
good (known as "the halo effect") or
exceptionally bad ("the horns effect").
In this picture of cartoon characters, Tom and
Jerry, Tom appears with horns as the “baddie”
and Jerry appears with a halo as the “goodie”.
Is Jerry so innocent?
Flickr attribution: /littlebiglens/9973539864/

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Assessing Performance
How to Compare Performance with Standards
One of the most commonly-used methods of
assessing performance is to set standards of work
and then through observation and measurement,
decide whether the standard has been met.
Since the introduction of vocational qualifications,
industry-wide standards of performance now exist
alongside company-wide standards for all jobs and
levels.
The three steps in assessing people against a
standard are...
1. agree what the standard is
2. gather factual and objective information on how
an employee performs
3. compare their performance to the standard.
It is important to agree with each appraisee on the
method of observation and measurement in order
to avoid snooping and excessive supervision.

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Assessing Performance
7. DISCUSS
WHAT THEY
THINK
Remember that the people with the best
knowledge of performance are the job-holders
themselves. That's why it's always a good idea to
listen to their own assessments of themselves
first. Sometimes people will talk themselves up,
sometimes down. Either way, this is a useful
starting point for your own assessment. Self-
assessment works because for motivational and
developmental purposes, what an employee
thinks of themselves is far more important than
what you, the manager, think of them.
Get assessments from a range of people
Flickr attribution: /capnvynl/5585745322/

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Assessing Performance
Self-Assessment Leads to Self-Motivation
If the predominant kind of assessment in control
appraisals is manager assessment then the main
kind of assessment in developmental appraisals is
self-assessment.
Self-assessment works because for motivational
and developmental purposes, what an employee
thinks of themselves is far more important than
what you, the manager, think of them.
Self-assessment is now an integral part
of the reporting process in many
organisations. It is even used by children
at school in their school reports. Pupils
are encouraged to say what they think
about their progress. This is a necessary
ingredient to getting people to take
ownership for their own performance.
A simple self-assessment starts with
asking yourself, “What am I pleased about
this year?” and then, “What for me could
have been better?”

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Assessing Performance
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn
AFinal
Word
Most people at work like to know how well they're doing. When we're told we're doing a good job,
it makes the effort worthwhile. Nor do most of us mind when we look at the less successful areas
of our work, with a view to improvement. However, when assessments are unilateral, judgmental
and unfairly critical, the whole process of appraisal is undermined and may be destroyed.