Effectiveness

Relationship:

Poor Communication During Formal Feedback Sessions

With competing priorities, managers can be unprepared or insufficiently trained for the inherent challenges to providing candid informal and formal performance feedback. For example, employees are often victims of the report card syndrome. This occurs when managers save up examples of poor performance for the performance appraisal interview and surprise employees with poor ratings.

This type of rater behavior diminishes employee satisfaction with the appraisal process, creating the opposite effect of eroding the appraisal system’s intended benefit of motivational and productivity improvement. Conversely, the report card syndrome is the absence of performance documentation. When this occurs, low performance ratings, unsupported by clear and specific performance evidence, frustrates the employee and creates a perception of unfairness, a prime motivation for grievances and lawsuits.

Rater Errors

Employees often realize when managers are not giving them accurate ratings. Many managers don’t want to deal with conflict, so they often give employees undeserved high ratings (researchers call this leniency tendency). Another mistake managers make is to give employees average ratings (central tendency). Sometimes managers impose unreasonably high performance standards, which can demoralize and discourage employees. So, while consistently high ratings rob employees of the intrinsic achievement and satisfaction for a job well done, harsh ratings reduce motivation by setting impossible performance standards. The major cause of these rater errors is a lack of training. Untrained raters are more likely to commit more performance appraisal mistakes, thereby eroding employee confidence in the performance appraisal system.

Employees often realize when managers are not giving them accurate ratings. Many managers don’t want to deal with conflict, so they often give employees undeserved high ratings...