BOLA: Staff Appraisal

Appraisal as a Control System

A staff appraisal policy establishes a standardised system for all staff or selected groups across the organisation.

Managers simply cannot opt out - they are obliged to do it. Their behaviour and action is trained and must be predictable and consistent.
The argument can be made that staff being appraised can expect to be protected and benefit by a consistency of approach with safeguards are built in to ensure that a maverick manager does not behave irascibly.

Every manager and every member of staff in the organisation must participate in the appraisal review and feedback process. They must do so as conformists, with belief and enthusiasm. It is unlikely that they can be deviants or absentees (except perhaps in a university or for prima donnas whose performance is highly valued). How do you feel about such exceptions? The outward appearance of what appraisers do must satisfy the requirements of the policy and administrative system.

The data shared in the process and conclusions reached (judgements) are recorded. At the level of the individual, the record - as a resume of what is agreed between supervisor and subordinate - is documented. In legalistic terms, this becomes

incorporated as an update of expectations and obligations under the contract of employment
A copy of the appraisal record goes to a central point - the Personnel Department or staff development section? - ostensibly for central consideration and analysis. Here is the assumed link with organisational and staff planning.
The organisation "should" - or so the prescription recommends - be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of individuals and groups so that forms of support can be mobilised to "get the best out of the human resources employed". This an essential purpose of an Investors in People philosophy. The actual reality however is hardly tested.

The control purposes of staff performance appraisal systems are seen clearly when linked with

performance-related pay
the potential of the system for identifying less-than-capable (in performance terms) members of staff. The system ensures that management intervention is systematic and recorded.

Words, competences and values

The writing of competence referencing statements requires considerable skill in English to capture the "turn of phrase" that describes the complex behaviours. The statements often weave in words of expectation and symbolic and promotional value - words and phrases that testify to some organisational imperative. Such phrasiology testifies to values of effort, commitment, attention to duty, the importance of quality and rising to the challenge. Encapsulated in an appraisal scheme - which staff are routinely exposed to a normal process - the ideas, symbols and imperatives are talked about . The talk occurs both inside and outside of the appraisal situation. Employees know that periodically they will go into a meeting and be asked to receive the manager's view on how they match up to the competence statements. They may be asked to lead the analysis themselves on the basis of their self-evaluation.

The mechanism of "the scheme" becomes a social process built by leading organisational figures to guide behaviour. The scheme requires the monitoring of an individual's position within this "space" and "time". The employee is monitored and the manager is monitored. Has the manager completed his/her appraisals in time for the salary review deadline? The appraisal is an engagement within a controlling discourse and each person is expected to subscribe to it.

Staff appraisal thinking (rhetoric and theory which supports the rhetoric) assumes that the systems are positive, beneficial and neutral yet we must be aware that they require acceptance and specific behaviours.

They are here to stay.

In pragmatic terms, staff appraisal systems will not go away. Rather we are seeing more and more elaborate schemes and even the use of computer supported performance monitoring (see Wilson and Ball, 2000) for example in service call centres (telesales) and supoermarkets.

Employees are hired because they can "do the business" for a given reward. The controllers of the organisation want to see value for money, loyalty and endeavour from this exchange. They desire to promote the values of the organisation and commitment of staff to these so that the organisation as "one" moves in a particular direction and thrives. The members of the organisation talk with one voice.

Sociologists readily cogitate and wax lyrical about the nature of social structures and processes and factors which determine our human and social condition. In business terms, a "Foucaultesque" analysis is unfathomable, word gaming, a rap which is miles away from "what is important to the business". Yet, if we are to really understand business structures and processes and distinguish promotional messages about human resource management from "what is" and "why it needs to be seen this way", then we need to be less blindly accepting and keep a critical eye on the claims and the nature of systems such as staff appraisal.

Wilson and Ball compare computer-aided performance monitoring to Foucault's account of the prison (1975) use of Bentham's Panopticon model to depict a "built" system (staff appraisal system?). This system applies to individuals who have to be together in the one place at the same time and through its operation they become 'knowable' to the observer. The system exerts and reproduces 'disciplinary power' by applying norms to determine individual judgement. These even extend to the individual being automatically self disciplined and even craving for the regulatory gaze and judgement. These matters shape individual perceptions and positions in the system.

When for example we define competencies we must be aware of

the context
the internal and external forces that push in given directions
who is doing the defining and for what reasons
and how individuals will be expected to join in this process or be marginalised and/or excluded.

These matters are not raised in the staff appraisal literature which tends to be very accepting of the obvious managerial declarations of purpose. Yet we need to be aware of them if we are to be critical of the claims of staff appraisal and comprehend its origin and influence in the organisational world of power and master-servant relationships.

How did the staff appraisal system originate in the organisation?

The introduction of a scheme or revitalisation of an existing scheme frequently starts with someone "up there" expressing the opinion that

"We must stimulate more effective performances out of our staff: develop their creative potential, set targets to be achieved, reward above average achievement and ensure that promotion is based on sound criteria."

In the UK, politicians seek to demonstrate that policies are working and if not we will do something about them. Performance monitoring and quality testing become the norm. Any public sector employee group such as teachers who are deemed to be insufficiently self-regulating may be subject to schemes to evaluate performance. In an attempt to justify giving more money to "sound, high quality teachers", a national staff appraisal scheme is put into place. The "professional" group is no longer trusted to be self-disciplined and scrutinising of standards. Instead a scheme has to be put into place to convey the new values and stimulate the process of scrutiny and comparison of individual performances against "standards".

Despite the appeal of staff appraisal (such a policy and practice seems perfectly reasonable in an employer-employee situation), a policy initiative may be resisted by people if, in a union trade setting, they act or speak collectively with union representation or, as individuals, they resent the troublesome intervention of scrutineers and participate in the system in a minimising, begrudging way. This was the case in the late 1990's, when the teacher unions in the UK criticised and ridiculed the employer's (the government) desire to introduce performance-related, appraisal linked merit pay for school teachers.

Resistance to staff appraise may arise because those whose performance is to be evaluated construe the message in a way not usually intended by the controlling authorities, perhaps like this:

"They will put pressure on poor performers so that they improve or leave. They will also make sure that people do what they're told and we will all be vulnerable to individual managerial whim and prejudice, losing a bit more control over our individual destinies."

Appraisal confirms the prerogative of the boss -- the person who supervises your contract of employment -- to be intrusive. This is a concrete manifestation of the act of "someone looking over your shoulder, breathing down your neck". Of course, in a high trust setting, where sharing, cooperation and peer review are desired by team members (a collective norm which should not be assumed) isn't the introduction of a scheme natural and desirable?

From another angle, rather than lapsing into a woolly, laissez faire position with room for complete individual freedom and worker control (see Harrison's personal culture), a managerial "destiny" to advise, shape and direct activity and encourage performance within the value-framework of the organisation may be justified. To accept or resent staff appraisal systems is an issue relating to individual liberty and freedom of action and control through systems requiring both conformity and acceptance, in discussion of the values and behaviours associated with the system.

Of course - in the real world (whatever this is) we are confronted by our contract of employment and we subordinate ourselves, volunarily (?) to constraints on our individual freedom of expression and action whilst at work. We willingly perform to a standard for a reward . We talk about the standards and indeed raise the standards ourselves. We join in the unifying enculturalisation and contribute to it ourselves. The high performers will talk up performance and gain status over more ordinary performers. The "prison" system becomes self-supervising.

Those who find the appraisal intervention intrusive may express natural apprehension about feedback processes that are underpinned by judgements made about oneself by others, however good their intentions. This approach is likely to engender:

Conflict behaviours and attitudes within the organisation
Managers as reviewers
- may be resistant to the efforts required,
- the fact that they may be answerable for the quality of their feedback,
- interpersonal risks (feedback to others exposes the giver to the defensive reactions of the recipient)
- and the administrative efforts required in preparation, recording and follow-up.

Thus in many organisations, whose "culture" is pluralistic and there are antipathies to staff appraisal, we find modifications or concessions in principles and practices embedded in the "scheme". The schemes become softer, less confronting and an emphasis on "personal development" is stressed rather than "appraisal judgements". This is very typical of staff appraisal systems in academic settings.

Policy concessions are made to ease apprehension and this can make schemes:

tentative with voluntarism still partly accepted
convoluted and apologetic. For "the managers" this may temper their power to "require" members of their staff to "get the message and do something about it"..
overly bureaucratic with additional levels, supervisory signatures required (rules of control) - all designed to ensure corporate consistency and fairness in the reported judgements These of course are also designed to protect the managers e.g. from allegations of bias, bullying, sex and racial discrimination.
Fluffy and bland - if the staff (the subjects) have reservations about the scheme this itself disempowers the appraisers who (hunch) will be inclined to make safe statements in the appraisal process rather than address task and relationships issues head on (evaluative, judgmeental and potentially disciplinary in nature).
have little impact on actual performance, except for the self-assured, high achievers at one extreme and disenchanted, dare I say it, "idlers" (as some would perceive them) at the other.
less open, trustworthy and more oriented to playing it safe rather than seeking and taking initiative.

So when will an appraisal scheme and process work?

The guidebooks argue that it works best when

there are clear and specific targets for people to reach, within an organisational culture that emphasises competition.

But then:

who sets the standards and who makes the judgements? Are these not set in day-to-day dealings between manager-staff, staff-and-their-work-context, staff-staff and staff-clients anyway? If these are the dominant processes of interaction and learning - then staff appraisal appears puny and post hoc by comparison. Yet the management by objectives approach has the capacity to be forweard looking, involving, problem-solving etc.
How are the judgements, by different appraisers of different appraisees, made consistent? How many business organisations actually do cross-validate; objectives, competencies, appraiser judgements, what individual members of staff are actually doing, feeling? There will be a heavy cost involved in such cross-validation - that of evaluation of the process itself. Here we will have another self-imposed system to raise business costs and give business people something to think about in addition to running the business and making money and giving service to people. There is a cost to quality inspection.

In conclusion

........ and arguing from the managerial, prescriptive position....despite its drawbacks, the staff appraisal approach is still potentially useful as

a system of consistent exchange between the organisation and each individual
providing a framework for career development discussion that is an improvement on doing nothing at all or impersonal existence.
It is most appropriate in bureaucratic organisations -- the emphasis on form-filling ensures care, attention and continuity. The data capture activity ensures this.
Matters relating to staff appraisal, as a power maintenance and control process, are little raised in the organisational literature which tends to be very accepting of obvious managerial declarations of purpose and benefit. Yet we need to be aware and critical of the claims of staff appraisal and comprehend its origin and influence as a subjective, embracing socially disciplining process.