Making Sure Employees Measure UP.

Creating the right performance appraisal system for your organization can help ensure that appraisals are done correctly, fairly and on time.

Initially John was thrilled to receive a promotion. He through his new responsibilities--such as using computers and working with vendors--would

But six months later, the audit was still incomplete and the raise had yet to materialize. What's more, John never received a required probationary performance review, which should have given him a small raise, or a union review which would have provided a contractually required raise.

In short, in less than a year John saw three raises slip through his fingers because appraisals either weren't conducted on weren't finalized. He sums up his feelings in these words "I've been shafted."

An Annual De-Motivator

Employers struggling to attract and retain talent can't afford to de-motivate employees. Yet this is precisely the result of flawed or weak performance evaluation systems. When reviews are not fair, accurate and timely, they fail to reward star performers, fail to provide encouragement and guidance to borderline workers and fail to give proper feedback to those whose work is substandard.

Even if such de-motivation doesn't prompt workers to leave your firm for greener pastures, it may end up costing you in productivity. Take the example of Ransom, a union employee in the aerospace industry who has been with the same company for 18 years. In that time, he has had exactly one face-to-face performance review with a supervisor.

"In the beginning, you're the lowest paid and you're trying to work hard and get raises," he says. "But no matter what I did, nobody reviewed my work and I never got noticed. After a while, I stopped being so concerned about performance.

"I don't think I developed a bad attitude," he says, "but I did stop being so gung-ho."

And That's the Way It Is?

Like many others, Ron Adler, co-author of the SHRM White Paper "Example Audit of an HR Function" and president and CEO of Laurdan Associates in Potomac, Md., believes that ongoing performance reviews are ideal. But, Adler notes, many managers and supervisors aren't trained to give the coaching and mentoring they should. (For more information on training managers to conduct reviews, see "Motivate Managers to Review Performance" on page 44.)