Having Trouble Getting Managers To Do Employee Reviews?
A: A Compensation and Benefits Professional writes…
Several of our managers are notoriously delinquent in processing their employees’ performance reviews and salary actions. Can anyone recommend a good technique to help them improve their timeliness?
B: Ken Godevenos replies…
Dear Colleague: This is an issue that keeps coming up with many of our clients and I usually ask them “how serious they are about fixing it?” If they’re really serious, I refer them to a technique I first heard about in Fortune Magazine several years back, when a CEO was so keen on really practicing the “people are our top asset” concept that he actually heldback “incentive payouts” or “merit increases of managers” right through the ranks until a manager, and all his/her direct and indirect managers had completed their performance assessments of their subordinates. Boy, did the reviews occur on time after that! He was able to do this easily as the whole system of performance management was “on line” internally, but it could easily be instituted manually. So, how serious are you about fixing your situation? Regards, Ken B. Godevenos
C: Another Practitioner adds…
Guess I can weigh in with an approach that pretty much mirrors Ken’s advocated strategy. We had a similar problem here a couple of years back and our first misguided approach was to withhold merit increases for employees with a current performance assessment. Although that generated some incremental improvements, it wasn’t difficult to figure out we were penalizing the wrong party. We shifted to the same approach as Ken, and went with a policy of no increase for the employee and the employee’s manager if a current performance assessment is not on file. It’s worked wonders for us for the past 2-3 years. Good luck, Chris Dobyns Westinghouse Savannah River Company
