November 2013 The Problem with Performance Ratings

The Industrial Organizational Psychologist

Vol 51 Issue 2 October 2013

http://www.siop.org/tip/default.aspx

There are two interesting articles related to Performance Management.

The first by Alan Colquitt, Reflections on the State of I-O Research and Practice: Lessons learned from Performance Management, makes the point that those ratings linked to bonuses have much more rater than ratee variance. To quote Colquitt:

“Performance ratings have far more to do with the person doing the rating than the person being rated. Worst case, it feels like a lottery; employees pull a ping-pong ball out of a machine that reveals their rating.”

The second article, an interview with Professor Daniel Simons of the inattention to gorilla fame points out a possible reason:

“If you’re a manager, and you’re evaluating someone’s performance, all you have are the little snippets in front of you from when you evaluated their performance. You don’t have the broader context,you don’t have the comparison to what happens when you weren’t observing them. What’s striking is how often we don’t notice or think about the evidence we’re missing.”