Some tips on performance reviews

From the perspective of defending employment termination and discrimination cases, I have become aware of the importance of employee evaluations. Done poorly, they can be great ammo for a plaintiff’s lawyer:

Q. Now Mr. Manager, you testified that during the last year of his employment my client was the subject of numerous customer complaints, right?

A.Yessir.

Q.And is this the evaluation of my client you completed two months before you fired him?

A. Well yes . . .

Q. Mr. Manager, sir, can you show me where it says you had a problem with customer complaints?

A. Well . . . uh . . . it doesn’t exactly say that.

Q. Exactly? Does it say anything even remotely like that?
A. No.

Of course, if done well, evaluations can make rather than break a defense case by showing the employee had full knowledge of what was expected and where he was seen falling short, with adequate opportunity to improve. And better yet, they might keep an employer away from the courthouse altogether, by causing a deficient employee to either shape up or ship out (voluntarily).

A few months ago, I ran across this article: “Helpful Hints for Staff Performance Reviews,” by Linda Oligschlaeger, Membership Services Director at The Missouri Bar. Although directed at law firm managers, it has some good general pointers, including this list of “Performance Review Pitfalls”:

1. Halo-effect. On occasion one characteristic about a person, either positive or negative, strongly influences all other attitudes about that person. For example, a physically attractive employee may not be held accountable for errors with as much scrutiny as a person who is not as attractive.

2. Leniency-strictness effect. Some evaluators have a tendency to give all high marks, while others tend to evaluate the same performance as average or less than average. In fact, some employees can subtly bully evaluators into all high marks every year, which can defeat the purpose of the evaluations — especially when others are rated more fairly. Rarely will an employee receive all outstanding ratings consistently year after year – no one is quite that perfect. It’s important that all evaluators use the same standards for their evaluations to maintain consistency . . . .

3. Contrast effect. The evaluation of one employee’s performance may be influenced by the performance of the others being evaluated. For example, an employee might receive a more than favorable review when following a poor performer or a less than favorable evaluation when followed by the shinning star of the office.

4. Recency effect. Recent events tend to have an usually strong influence on performance evaluations. An employee’s good work for the entire year might be overshadowed by one negative incident that happened prior to the review.

5. Central tendency effect. Some evaluators give all average ratings to avoid taking a risk to identify marginal or outstanding performance. Again, this defeats the entire process.