December 2, 2014: A performance review for a high performer with a significant flaw

Let's suppose an employee on your design team is a great designer.  She is easy to get along with, works hard, and is very competent.  She hates to do any paper work.  Her expense reports are months late, her weekly project reports are late or don't come in, etc.  You know the drill.  Her goals and objectives are weighted heavily to her design work, and the entire admin side is about 15%.  She has earned high ratings for everything except admin.  Her poor admin, however, has drawn attention from your 2nd line manager, the VP for operations.

By the numbers, her review should be about 4.5 out of 5.  You feel like she should get a 2.8 as a wake up call because of this one area of poor performance.  But the numbers don't justify it.  Referencing our analogy from yesterday, her fuel pump gave out.  How do you write and deliver this review?

The first thing you do is do the review by the numbers.  It's not right to change the goals to gerrymander the result to the number you want it to be.  When you do it by the numbers, she ends up at 4.5  Given her total performance compared to her peers (who aren't as good at design work but do take care of their admin), the 4.5 does seem high.  The review then needs a second pass.  Is there a teamwork goal?  You are part of the team, and her poor performance in this one area made your work more difficult.  That one can come down a notch.  Is there something on delivering projects in a timely fashion?  If the admin can be considered part of the project, then this can also come down a notch.  In the end, although you only have 1 specific goal for admin, admin work influences many other aspects of a person's performance.

In the end, she gets a 3.8 instead of the 4.5.  This is still well above average.  The review is very repetitive, referencing these same failings in instance after instance.  You have plenty of positive feedback for her, but you need to make sure she understands how you perceive her total performance.

You meet for your one on one, and you can tell from her face that she's not pleased with the score.  You ask why, and she asks, "What else could I have better?  I thought I was really on top of it this period."

You start to go through the form (it's a long one), and you point out the places where admin brought her total score down.  You tell her that you took the time to do the review without admin impact, and the result was a 4.5.  "When you don't prioritize key business processes, it hurts you over all your goals.  If you have done your admin well, I would have been happy to give you a 4.5."  You complement her on the other aspects of her job.  Thankfully, because she is a good performer, she can take the bad news.

It is clear from the feedback from your VP, however, that a 3.8 is not much of a punishment.  She is still rated higher than all but 1 of her peers despite the headaches from the finance department with her expense reports.  The work for this employee isn't changing for the next review period.  The content of her goals shouldn't change.  In this case, it is worth it to increase the weight for her admin for the next review period.  You explain your plan to the VP, and it makes sense to him.  He is concerned, but trusts you.

At the goal setting session, you explain the need for admin to increase as a percentage of total score, and your employee understands.  She's not happy because admin is only 10% of her time, but now it's 30% of her review.  She understands that the purpose is to focus on it so she'll do it.

You have other options, of course: disciplinary action, move to another department, change job duties, decrease the admin burden.  But she is good in her current role as long as she fixes this little thing.  There is no reason she can't or won't.  You now have to follow up and help her be successful.

Just about every employee has an Achilles heel: poor emotional control, low work quality, tardiness, late work, making promises that he can't keep, etc.  The review process allows both you and the employee to put these weaknesses under the bright lights, examine them, and take some action.  If done properly, it will deepen the trust in your relationship and enable a partnership for improvement for both of you.