Human resource management principles and practices

Coaching as an Alternative to Reviews in Performance Appraisal

Human resources is an area fraught with the most complex issues facing corporations today. From the Americans with Disabilities Act to the Equal Employment Commission to sexual harassment training, human resources departments have gone from storing file folders with employees' remaining vacation days to the most critical wing of an organization.

Perhaps the oldest human resources duty that stays within the department today is performance appraisal. Human resources manages and selects the manner in which bosses evaluate employees at an organization. The procedures involved impact not only salaries and promotions, but form the very fabric of the organization. Are employees motivated, productive and happy? The answer to those questions most often lies within performance appraisal methods. In fact, it is not at all a stretch to comment that performance appraisal governs whether an organization is successful at all.

The problem lies in the history of performance appraisal. From eons ago, bosses simply called employees into their offices to accost them with their errors.

Sometimes, these conversations would encompass yearly salary increases, and not much more. Slowly, these conversations evolved into yearly reviews. Generally, reviews were held once a year, and again listed the errors made by an employee, although sometimes praise was thrown at the employee too. Salary discussions and benefits discussions routinely became part of the reviews.

The inherent problems with reviews were -- and continue to be -- numerous. First, the boss talks to the employee from on high: For instance, the rhetoric is quite similar to this dramatization: "I am your superior, therefore I will tell you what you are doing wrong, and you will simply accept my criticism sans comment." This is problematic for so many reasons. First, the boss often really does not know what the employee does on a day-to-day basis. Second, the employee is immediately on the defensive, and continues to be so throughout the review. This defensive posturing extends most often throughout the employee's relationship with the organization; if reviews are so one-sided, it is more than likely that the company's culture is one-sided too.

Perhaps the biggest issue that is missed in traditional reviews is simply the understanding that employees have a lot to contribute to organizations. As foot soldiers who fight on the ground floor or on the front, depending on one's analogy, employees generally have the best ideas on how to improve performance, attitude, and bottom line results and financials for an organization. Moreover, they at least have a better idea than does the boss of their own strengths and weaknesses. They know best how they can contribute to the organization, and know even better how they are not, and cannot, contribute nearly as well.

Enter coaching. Coaching, in many progressive or frontier companies, replaces reviews entirely. Coaching begins with the premise that employees and bosses are equal on the plane of life; bosses simply have a broader position at a particular organization. Coaching occurs at least twice a year, rather than once a year for reviews, and maybe occur more frequently.

Each time a coaching session is begun, three steps are involved. All are written and recorded. The first step asks the employee herself to evaluate her performance. It starts with the question, "What have I done for you lately?" In other words, allow the employee to begin first with what he or she feels he or she has accomplished since the last coaching session: what he or she has contributed to the corporation.

The purpose of this particular way of starting is manifold. First, the employee is not at all on the defensive. The first opportunity the employee has to speak -- which is the start of the session, as in the first coaching session, the boss does not really speak but to encourage the employee to vent his thoughts -- the employee is forced to say something good about himself. Note that in a traditional review, the employee is forced to defend his least satisfactory performance immediately.

Not only does this remove the defensive posturing, it actually, in many cases, exposes the boss to the employee's contributions, contributions about which the boss may know absolutely nothing. For instance, the employee may work largely on her own, and the boss might head up the department, but work only rarely with the employee. If the employee has actually given her time generously to respond to an information technology survey, or organize a charity fundraiser at the office, it is highly unlikely that the boss would know. That is why starting with the employee's moment to shine and express how he or she has shined is a productive beginning.

Then the employee moves on to the things he or she did not accomplish. Rather than the boss telling the employee, the employee volunteers the information himself. Most times, employees will know exactly the areas in which their performance has lacked, and need no one to browbeat them. When browbeating occurs, its only result is to antagonize the employee and put him on the defensive again. (http://www.accel-team.com/human_resources/coaching.html)

Most times, bosses find, the employees are a lot harder on themselves than are bosses. The function here is to air exactly how the employee himself thinks he can improve.

Then, at the end of the first coaching session, the employee is asked where he sees himself in one year, five years and ten years and how he sees his role changing in the future (if at all) in the organization. Also, the employee is encouraged to raise any mobility or compensation issues. (www.knowledgepoint.com/hr/lbwhite.html ) Here, the employee is allowed to ask for what he wants without limitation. The company may not be able to grant it, but in the coaching format, the employee is not faulted for asking, and feels comfortable doing so. Contrast this to a review in which asking for a raise seems akin, at times, to asking for a presidential pardon. (http://www.ideasandtraining.com/Employee-Coaching-Programs.html)

The boss takes a week to about three weeks to mull over the employee's first coaching session, then responds with the second session. Here, the boss expresses how she feels the employee has helped the organization first; what the employee has to offer, and has actually offered. Again, this starts the second coaching session off on a positive note wherein the boss is not antagonizing the employee needlessly.