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Performance Profiling
 The measure of success is not whether you have
a problem to deal with, but whether it's the
same problem you had last year.
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John Foster Dulles
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Chances are, you have at least one big problem this year that you also had last year — how to appraise the performance of your knowledge workers. It's not that you haven't tried improving your process; most organizations have tried repeatedly to improve this kind of appraisal. Knowledge workers and managers typically don't produce easily quantifiable output from their efforts. At ReliableSurveys.com, we believe we have the solution to this situation.
We actually have two approaches to the appraisal of managers and knowledge workers. On this page, we discuss Performance Profiling as opposed to Performance Ranking which ranks individuals based on their relative performance.
Performance Profiling is an assessment process for identifying an individual's performance-related strengths and areas of needed improvement. It is not like traditional appraisals because there is no single "judge", no comparison to other workers, no fixed "curve", no ratings to be inflated by friendships.
The focus of Performance Profiling is on the behaviors, skills, and characteristics a person brings to his or her job, and how well they "match" the performance requirements of the job, or other jobs in the organization.
Above all, the process is reliable. Not because we say it is, but because we report the split-half reliability of every assessment and it's printed on the reports for any statistician to check. It is also valid for decision-making, if the dimensions have been selected properly and the evaluators are the ones who really know the person's on-the-job conduct.
What You Get With Performance Profiling:
- An ideal performance profile that defines the behaviors, skills, and characteristics that define high performance in the job. This "high performance ideal" is not some "generic" ideal cooked up by a consultant or the latest management fad. The ideal profile is defined internally by the organization, and looks different for as many different jobs as there are in the organization.
- An actual performance profile of an individual's strengths and areas of needed improvement in the behaviors, skills, and characteristics they bring to their work.
- A developmental "Gap Analysis" that results when the actual profile is matched to the ideal profile for the current job to identify the "gaps" needing attention. These are the data for feedback and improvement discussions about current job performance.
- An assessment of potential performance that results when the actual profile is matched to the ideal profile for a different position, to determine the person's potential for successful transfer or promotion.
- All appraisal results are based on the consensus of from 5 to 15 peers, coworkers or clients who can be self-selected or selected by the organization.
- An appraisal process that offers protection against errors in the results due to bias, intentional manipulation, or misunderstandings
- An appraisal process that is cost-effective and time-efficient, designed and conducted by in-house personnel requiring little or no consultant help.
- An appraisal process that adapts to the size of the situation - it works well with just a handful of key people or your whole organization.
 Performance Profiling is deployable in traditional paper and pencil forms or hosted online.
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Common Mistakes Made when Appraising Performance and Giving Feedback to Knowledge Workers:
Wanting to Have One System For Everything - In general, there are two broad reasons for needing Performance Evaluation:
- to provide concrete and helpful feedback to employees, to assist them in setting goals, to modify and improve their performance and help them to make realistic career decisions.
- to provide management with defensible and understandable comparative data with which to make difficult comparative decisions, such as who should be promoted, who should receive a performance bonus, etc.
Instead of asking, "How can I develop a system that does everything?" it is more effective to ask, "What is the primary need of the organization for evaluation?" The decisions that require a procedure for appraising performance should be the driving force behind the choice of a method.
Avoiding Anything Subjective - Appraising professionals and knowledge workers is inherently subjective. Any attempt to avoid subjectivity and only use objective data like profits, percentage improvements, or cost reductions will generate a lot of numbers, but not much good information about your professionals' strengths and weaknesses.
Not Wanting to Ask Reliability Questions - Non-technically speaking, a reliable performance evaluation is
"A process that gives the same results each time you use it."
A reliability question is something like "What is the best time for your boss to appraise your performance: Monday morning or Wednesday afternoon?" Most people answer without hesitation, "Wednesday afternoon; bosses are in better moods then." If the mood of the boss can affect the level of a person's appraised performance, then the process the boss is using is not reliable. Reliability questions are not optional if you want a good system.
Not Wanting to Ask Validity Questions - An informal definition of a valid evaluation process is
"A process that really measures performance, not political support, mentor sponsorship, or the university one attended."
A Validity question would be "What are the appropriate criteria, and their respective weightings that accurately reflect the performance of a design engineer?" Validity questions deal with the criteria, the setting, and the participants of an assessment process. Validity questions are also not optional.
Trusting Only Supervisors to be Evaluators - This issue relates to reliability and validity. Twenty years of legal decisions on measuring performance have led us to conclude that the "Supervisor-only" approach weakens the reliability and validity of evaluation. Alternately, using multiple evaluators, from a variety of roles in the organization has been shown to increase both the reliability and validity of the evaluation process. Multi-rater assessments are also perceived to be fair to those being evaluated, especially if peers or peer evaluations play a role in the appraisal process.
Spending Too Much Money - Just because there is subjectivity in professional assessment does not mean you have to rely on expensive external professionals to assess your people. Excellent programs can be built and run solely by your in-house professionals at a reasonable cost.
Not Defining the Ideal - The "ideal employee" is not simply someone who is strong in all skill areas. An ideal profile defines the skills that are important to high performance in a certain job. This is the step where you define the ideal against which you will evaluate employee performance. It is a process usually overlooked.
Defining Only One "Ideal" - A single ideal contradicts everything already known from experience about professional workers -- the ideal VP of Sales looks very different from the ideal VP of Research Development.
Using a Generic or Externally Defined Ideal - A generic Ideal Profile ignores what is known about the cultures of different organizations -- a style or approach to management that would be successful in one organization could easily be a failure in another. Ideal Profiles should be developed internally, by people who know the organization's culture, its past and its future.
Not Controlling Bias and Dishonesty - "Popularity Contest"! That's what your appraisal program will be called if it does not have good controls on 1) conscious and unconscious bias, and 2) dishonesty. It would also be nice to know who put thought and time into the process, and who just hastily completed the forms while waiting to board an airplane. You must carefully select your measurement process if you want to be able to do this.
Focusing on Only Part of Effective Job Performance - Effective performance involves behaviors (which can be observed), skills (which can be acquired through learning events), and personal characteristics (the relatively permanent qualities acquired early in life). Performance profiling must assess all of these.
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Show me what Performance Profiling looks like.
If you are interested, you can contact us and tell us about your needs and situation. You can also click here to learn more about how we work together on a project like this.
How do I get more information?
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