The problem with personnel systems is personnel.

Programs designed to evaluate employee performance are inherently flawed.  They are designed by people, who, despite the best of intentions, believe written words can properly and comprehensively capture the true essence of any employee’s performance and worth on the job.

That’s a rather dire statement, one that leaves little hope for success for such currently controversial systems as the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), which is battling courts and unions.

Interestingly, the concept behind most any personnel evaluation system is agreed upon by virtually everyone.   Recognize and reward laudable effort; critique and eliminate unacceptable behavior or inadequate results.  Beyond that very first step, problems loom large.

Who determines good from bad?  How can supervisory bias be eliminated, or acceptably minimized, to ensure that proper staff assessments are made?  Can these systems foster office morale and esprit de corps, which is critical to achieving mission and maintaining ongoing effectiveness?

During my years in the government, most people hated “bean-counting” and numbers.  That’s understandable because ”numbers games” exist in many enterprises within the federal government and elsewhere.  Have you read about complaints that the Missouri Valley Conference has “gamed” the mechanics of the Rating Percentage Index (RPI) system used by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to invite teams to its profitable annual basketball tournament?  Yes, games can be played with numbers, but numbers are objective on their face: people recognize that 5 is greater than 4, which is greater than 1, etc.

Thus, the solution, albeit imperfect, is to craft a personnel system that quantifies to the greatest extent the nature of the work being done by the workforce.  Those achieving scores – ratings – supporting program objectives should receive the more favorable evaluations.  For example, if you are in a processing organization, you would want production (higher value, i.e., widgets/hour) and quality (lower error rate) measures.  Through agreed upon mathematical formulae, union and management could operate in an environment designed to achieve and reward a predetermined outcome: better performance, better results.

Performance systems not based upon measurable results are so flawed as to be useless.  Of course, results and quantitative measures alone can’t accurately portray the employee’s full capabilities or worth.  Dependability, personality, social skills and graces, emotional intelligence, etc., are absolutely critical in evaluating how well individuals fit into a team and help achieve the collective mission.  The only “small” problem with these key human attributes is that assessments are entirely dependent upon subjective determinations by other human beings:  the employer, manager, co-workers, customers, etc.  It is clearly at this point that most personnel systems break down and are targets of unrelenting criticism by unions and employees.

It’s pointless to argue that the supervisor knows best.  Even if that is more true than not, and I hope it is within most organizations, that dog won’t hunt.  Remember the TV series Father Knows Best.  That concept is so passé today that any presumed authoritative model will always be subject to question or possibly even scorn.  Yet, such assessments matter.  Let’s look at one extreme example (maybe you know employees like this) from the sports world.

A baseball team has two players.  One bats .400 (which means he hits safely – gets on base or hits a home run — 4 out of every 10 times at bat); the other .200, which is generally considered to be a measure of a very weak hitter.  The .400 hitter will undoubtedly be paid more than the player batting .200 because baseball is about scoring and winning and teams with .400 hitters usually beat those with .200 batters.  It’s simple.  A baseball team wants better hitters and is willing to pay more for them.

Now for the twist.  These two players are polar opposites not only is hitting but in interpersonal skills.  The better hitter is a terrible influence in the locker room and foments all kinds of discord and controversy.  The poor hitter is a peacemaker and strives tirelessly to rescue his team’s psyche from the precipice on which it rests because of the superstar’s antics.  Despite the latter’s initiative, the team has no cohesion, tensions run high, and the team’s record, as measured by wins and losses, reflects this and is abysmal.

How now does one evaluate and reward the .400 and .200 hitters?  Is the discord caused by the one worse than the lack of offensive punch of the other?  Can anyone truly measure how much the one player’s action produces a negative effect?  And if so, to what extent, say, on a scale of 1 to 10, can this player be judged?

It’s not surprising that how you or anyone (read: supervisor or manager) assessing this condition could be subject to second-guessing and properly so.  People who are evaluated by others need to feel that they have an open, honest, and balanced forum in which they may explain their side of the story.  This can’t be a zero-sum game when all gains by one party are necessarily losses to the other.  However that’s the way most appraisal systems have been perceived.

My suggested solution is to maximize the metrics (cold-hard numbers which all agree are essential to success) and minimize factors calling for unreasonable qualitative assessments.  One can’t remove the latter factors — and shouldn’t – because they are important.  Employees who don’t possess adequate social skills should not be representing their companies in public forums, for example.  Supervisors, through their inherently duty and role, are necessarily required to determine who’s helping the cause and who’s hurting it.  Disagreements over such value judgments, which ultimately will have financial impact to employees, are inevitable.  Disputes will persist, appeals will be made, and deleterious effects to morale will have to be addressed and managed. 

Nevertheless, although imperfect, appraisal systems are here to stay.  All of us need to accept their inherent weaknesses and work together as best as we can to design those constructs that are most likely to produce results virtually everyone can agree upon:  recognize and reward laudable effort; critique and eliminate unacceptable behavior or inadequate results.

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor