I want to engage you in a discussion about the foundations of Performance Appraisal in healthcare organisations.
We all think appraisal is a good idea, what do you think? I’m sure it is, but the good idea tends to be different, for each organisation. Are you driven by the need to comply with external audit of compliance, or the desire to create a highly competitive organisation? Is the focus on helping everyone to achieve their ambitions, or on aligning staff to your corporate goals? We believe there is no one right answer, but we do believe that effective organisations have a clear idea about what they’re trying to achieve and how they go about achieving it. In our experience, leaders in HR often ask questions in these 4 categories – we’d encourage you to ask them of your own organisations, too:
- WHY should your staff engage in performance appraisal?
- WHAT are you trying to achieve through performance appraisal?
- HOW do you do performance appraisal in your organisation?
- WHERE are the benefits IF you do performance appraisal?
Why should your staff engage in performance appraisal?
If you ran your own business and 70% of your customers did not rate one of your services (meaning the sales were poor); you would drop it or at least improve it, right?
The 2010 NHS Staff Survey Acute Trust average for the percentage of staff having a well-structured appraisal in the last 12 months (key finding 14) was 34%, meaning that 66% of staff (your customers) do not rate the NHS’s appraisal service! Of course, your organisation may be achieving better statistics, but if you were selling the service, what would your “customers” say, what do they value, what would they like to improve?
And, back to the question, why do your staff need to engage in performance appraisal process? Is it because the process is mandatory (and if so, why?) or induced by an extrinsic incentive (e.g. for reward or pay increment)? Or is it a process that is chosen by staff in order to seek feedback without coercion or extrinsic incentive, linked to a staff development process?
In your policy is there an explanation of WHY staff need to do appraisal?
What are you trying to achieve through performance appraisal?
From our work and research, there are 7 functional categories for performance appraisal. Organisations can use their performance appraisal process for more than one of these, but generally not all 7!:
- Improvement – the process should help both the individual and the organisation to get better results, improve quality, improve efficiency, effectiveness, and create alignment.
- Coaching & guidance – the process provides a tool and framework for coaching, counselling and motivating staff.
- Feedback & communication – the process is intended to enhance communication between the individual, the manager (or appraiser), and others in the organisation.
- Reward – the process is related to the increase in an individual’s salary.
- Staffing decisions – the process provides information to enable the organisation to fairly and effectively select staff for promotion and redundancy.
- Personal and professional development – the process is used to identify individual learning needs and assist in professional development.
- Termination and legal procedures – the process provides objective and impartial documentation that is necessary or useful in disciplinary and discharge decisions.
Is it clear in your policy WHAT performance appraisal is meant to achieve?
How do you do performance appraisal in your organisation?
Before we address the question, let’s look at some common assumptions:
- One performance appraisal method can effectively serve several functions or departments at the same time.
- People want to know and need to know where they stand, and performance appraisals fulfil this.
- The organisation and the manager/appraiser are responsible for individual staff morale, performance and development.
So, what do you think about these alternative assumptions:
- The multiple purposes of performance appraisal can be better achieved by separate processes?
- Staff want to clearly understand and access the information and knowledge that influences decisions about their pay, promotion and future development?
- As healthy adults, staff need to be responsible for their own morale, performance, and development, with and without support from the organisation?
HOW do you do performance appraisal in your organisation, and is it there to improve individual performance in order to improve organisational performance, or do you need to improve systems and processes around performance appraisal?
Where are the benefits if you do performance appraisal?
One well documented benefit of performance appraisal in the NHS is based on the research conducted by Professors Borrill & West at Aston University on ‘Effective HR Management & Lower Patient Mortality’ with the key research outcome stating that appraisal systems have the strongest association with lower patient mortality, and that the better appraisal of staff is associated with lower patient mortality.
Where are the benefits for staff if they do performance appraisal:
- Gaining a better understanding of their role?
- Improving understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and developmental needs?
- What about other benefits, or wider benefits to the manager and/or the organisation?
Based upon WHERE you think the benefits in performance appraisal are for staff, managers and the organisation, think what you could do IF a well-structured performance appraisal process was implemented, and how this would interface to personal development review.
Shaun Wilde
Director of Workforce Services
About Shaun Wilde
Shaun is our Director of Workforce Technology and has worked with Think Associates from its earliest days back in 2004. He has a specialist interest in learning technologies and in particular e-learning development, Microsoft SharePoint, and cloud-based e-learning. As a dual qualified Chartered HR & Microsoft Certified IT Professional he focuses on developing technology solutions that enable workforce productivity in the context of HR, Learning & Development. Shaun has a MBA from Manchester Business School and is a NLP Master Practitioner.
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