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{{A| | {{A|hr|{{Image|360|png|}}}}{{quote|{{Deming on performance appraisal}}}}You could call it many things: a orchestrated scheme for institutionalised nepotism; a sanctioned suburbia of rotten boroughs; management-sponsored low-level cronyism; a massive multi-player online role-playing game or, most emphatically, a colossal, unflinchingly [[tedious]] waste of an institution’s collected time and resources. | ||
}}You could call it many things: a orchestrated scheme for institutionalised nepotism; a sanctioned suburbia of rotten boroughs; management-sponsored low-level cronyism; a massive multi-player online role-playing game or, most emphatically, a colossal, unflinchingly [[tedious]] waste of an institution’s collected time and resources. | |||
One thing you may be sure it is ''not'' is a meaningful way of evaluating staff. | One thing you may be sure it is ''not'' is a meaningful way of evaluating staff. | ||
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Inevitably it is decreed: ''this'' year there will be no deadline extensions; ''this'' year it will be simple; ''this'' year the system will not freeze or fail to save your work when it unexpectedly crashes at fifteen minutes to midnight on the deadline for submission — a deadline which contracts with every year that passes. | Inevitably it is decreed: ''this'' year there will be no deadline extensions; ''this'' year it will be simple; ''this'' year the system will not freeze or fail to save your work when it unexpectedly crashes at fifteen minutes to midnight on the deadline for submission — a deadline which contracts with every year that passes. | ||
Each year, defiant non-compliance and massive IT malfunction ensure it will be otherwise. The scope of the [[360]] | Each year, defiant non-compliance and massive IT malfunction ensure it will be otherwise. The scope of the [[360]] — how extensive; how frequent; how in-depth — is a good measure of how captive a firm is to its [[HR department]]. It might be fun to chart aggregate time invested in the 360 process against share price. | ||
No-one doubts the [[360]] is well intended. So was Neville Chamberlain in Munich. By polling those with whom an employee has most closely worked regardless of rank, department or disposition, it is meant to provide a comprehensive and unbiased analysis of each employee’s contribution to the firm’s performance. | No-one doubts the [[360]] is well-intended. So was Neville Chamberlain in Munich. By polling those with whom an [[employee]] has most closely worked regardless of rank, department or disposition, it is meant to provide a comprehensive and unbiased analysis of each employee’s contribution to the firm’s performance. | ||
Scoring is numeric against standardised criteria: i.e., multi-choice. Since marks out of five fail to provide a script for the awkward half hour “[[performance conversation]]” one | Scoring is numeric, against standardised criteria: i.e., multi-choice. Since marks out of five fail to provide a script for the awkward half-hour “[[performance conversation]]” one must conduct months after the process completes, appraisers have to compose prose evaluations as well. Even the most public-spirited employee will find this trying. | ||
Reducing matters to [[force-ranking|statistical analysis which can be fitted to a normal distribution]] is, of course, the sort of thing that aspiring [[management consultant]]s adore, dispensing as it does with any need to understand the [[Substance and form|fundamentals]] of the business. Everyone else thinks it is lunacy. If an employee’s contribution really can be reduced to a percentage, the open question is ''why have the employee at all?'' | Reducing matters to [[force-ranking|statistical analysis which can be fitted to a normal distribution]] is, of course, the sort of thing that aspiring [[management consultant]]s adore, dispensing as it does with any need to understand the [[Substance and form|fundamentals]] of the business. Everyone else thinks it is lunacy. If an employee’s contribution really can be reduced to a percentage, the open question is ''why have the employee at all?'' | ||
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And that, a [[management consultant]] might say, is exactly the point. | And that, a [[management consultant]] might say, is exactly the point. | ||
Nonetheless, the [[360]] is wide open to abuse. Unless {{sex|he}} is uncommonly stupid, | Nonetheless, the [[360]] is wide-open to abuse. Unless {{sex|he}} is uncommonly stupid, no employee will nominate anyone with whom he hasn ot already sealed a pact for mutually-assured admiration. | ||
To correct this bias, some systems allow “unsolicited anonymous feedback”. But bitter indeed is {{sex|she}} who goes out of her way to torpedo a colleague who has at least done her the favour of ''not'' requesting an appraisal. Bitter, and short of better things to do. Most appraisers have trouble summoning the will to appraise those whom they ''do'' have to evaluate without volunteering to character assassinate those they don’t. | To correct this bias, some systems allow “unsolicited anonymous feedback”. But bitter indeed is {{sex|she}} who goes out of her way to torpedo a colleague who has at least done her the favour of ''not'' requesting an appraisal. Bitter, and short of better things to do. Most appraisers have trouble summoning the will to appraise those whom they ''do'' have to evaluate without volunteering to character assassinate those they don’t. | ||
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Fat chance of that, though. | Fat chance of that, though. | ||
===The horizontal 360=== | |||
Geometers will at once recognise that 360 degrees describes a complete revolution in a plane of ''two'', and not ''three'', dimensions. This got us wondering: if, as per modern dogma, employment really is a “two way conversation”, in which each side has obligations and rights; a symbiotic ecosystem where each party works for the enduring benefit of the other, then when do the workers get the chance to appraise the ''company’s'' performance? At what point do staff get to say to their corporate overlords and their earthly representatives, those gilded agents who occupy its executive suite that they have lacked focus, been ineffective, failed to deliver on key expectations? | |||
“Ah, but that is the [[employee survey]]!” they will cry. But it isn’t, is it? This is the [[change paradox]]: management is, in this regard, like that [[This email is auto-generated. Please do not reply to it.|pestering email sent from an unmonitored account]]: good for communication in ''one'' way only. Talking, not listening. A skilfully contrived [[questionnaire]], begging questions already answered in management’s own meta-theory, cannot critically assess management’s performance. All answers it yields, 1 through 5, are of a piece with the existing theory of the game. The [[paradigm]] governs what count as good questions as well as what could as good answers. Thanks to the [[agency problem]], we feel this to be necessarily so: no agent designs a survey designed to prove her own [[redundancy]]. The [[employee survey]] is prisoner of the [[paradigm]] from which it emanates. | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*[[Force-ranking]] | *[[Force-ranking]] | ||
*[[Normal distribution]]s | *[[Normal distribution]]s | ||
*[[Second-order derivative]]s | *[[Second-order derivative]]s | ||
{{Friday Philosophy|Nov 20}} | |||