Here is the final entry in a series of five short articles addressing some of the more common compensation issues facing HR professionals today.

The fifth of the Five Biggest Mistakes is Performance Management

Another New Form?
Improving your organization's Performance Management System does NOT mean adding color to your forms and adding more detailed explanations. It's not the form - it's the process!

A Few Hints:

Some hints to improve your Performance Management system immediately:

• Realize that good performance management is not an annual event - it's an ongoing process.
• Get active sponsorship (not just approval) from senior management. If you only have approval, it's an HR program -- that will die a slow and painful death. If you have active sponsorship, it's the CEO's program and HR is simply making it happen.
• Train evaluators, then hold them accountable for getting evaluations done timely and accurately.
• If most of your employees are rated above average (or whatever term indicates more than doing a good solid job,) consider using a forced ranking for a year or two to regain control. (Forced raking does not mean you have to terminate the lower performers; it is simply a tool to ensure the organization can get back on track, i.e., most of the employees should be clustered around the 'doing a good solid job' rating.)

An example of forced raking for a 5-level ranking system:

• 5 (Highest) - 8% of your organization
• 4 - 20% of your organization
• 3 (Good solid job) - 60% of your organization
• 2 - 10%
• 1 (Lowest) - 2%

Bottom Line:

Focus on performance not the form. Routinely work on performance metrics. If you can measure it, you  can get results and communicate it well.

Next month, we'll begin an amusing look at surveys.