From the Ask Tom mailbag:
Question:
This is about the production supervisor for our company. He is generally well regarded by most of his subordinates, as easygoing, who tries to help his employees in any way he can. If a worker needs a small loan until payday, he digs into his pocket. If an employee needs some time off for a personal problem, he takes up the slack himself, doesn’t dock the time off.
At the last performance appraisal, one of his workers had experienced a large number of personal problems during the year. In the appraisal, he decided to do as much as possible to help. Although an average worker, he rated him outstanding in virtually every category. Because the firm’s compensation system is heavily tied to performance appraisal, this created a merit increase of 10% in addition to COLA.
The employee has acknowledged that his performance was no better than average, but didn’t hesitate to tell his friends about his wonderful boss.
What difficulties do you think this has created for the company? Is there anything that should be done to diminish any negative impacts?
Response:
For, now, I will leave this to our readers. Please post any comments you have using the link below. To read posted comments, follow this link to the website that supports this blog. This should be interesting. -TF
I feel pretty strongly about this one.
Systems (whether codified and authorized or whether informal and underground) drive behavior. Managers are accountable to follow the organization’s authorized systems.
This manager, though well intentioned, has violated the system by lying and committing fraud which had a net result of stealing (via overinflated compensation) from the company.
Once managers breach the system and are not held to account, the organization has set the expectation that systems can be circumvented for a good reason. If this is the case, they can no longer, in good faith, reprimand or terminate any employee for breaching the system. So if a production manager needs to send out defective products to “save” his production numbers, so be it. If a sales person needs to promise something that’s not quite accurate, that’s OK if you get the sale. If you need to sneak out of work for a few hours, it’s OK for me to cover for you. If we need to cheat a little on our environmental impact reporting, well that’s OK because we do a lot of good other places. If we need to fudge our drug trial research, so be it because of the greater good the drug will do overall. You see how this is a slippery slope?
Once employees do not trust the system to be consistent, fair and applicable to all, you’ve got anarchy. Good luck with that.
Managers play a very cricial stewardship role in relationship to their direct reports that must be enacted with unquestioning integrity. This manager made a serious error here and it needs to be addressed.
Regards,
Michelle Malay Carter
Michelle Carter has pegged this one! In the case of Mr. Nice Guy, sugar coating one employee’s performance evaluation is causing the decay of the entire system. He may be well intentioned but he is neither a credible manager nor a desireable employee.
I agree with Ron and Michelle. Besides gutting the merit right our from the performance system, he asked exposed the organizations to favoristism and discrimination claims. What happens the next time an employee has “personal issues” and doesn’t get a raise?
I agree, too. This manager’s mistake works to undo the incentive that the merit based compensation is designed to encourage. It’s not supposed to be a feel-good exercise.
Take the example a few steps farther, where the manager might over-estimate everyone’s performance equally.
If the majority of people’s performance is average/mediocre and they get rewarded as being outstanding, then what about the few people who actually did outperform everyone else?
The incentive to perform above average is gone, at that point. There is no reward attached to striving for excellence and in the end it simply encourages mediocrity.
I think this is one of the reasons that merit based compensation is less prevalent than it used to be.
I seriously agree with Michelle for the most part but there are exceptions. I have found that some employees can achieve a real and true positive (even excellent) review while moving in a direction that is not in tune with the company’s goals and core values. An employee can look at a review form months prior and insure a positive outcome while working in a completely different direction.
I suspect that the greatest impact that the actions of this manager will have, is in the area of employee morale. It is impossible to expect that others will not notice what has happened and feel that there is less incentive to work hard, resulting in decreased morale and productivity. Sure personal circumstance affects your work at times but employees need to know that their workplace is fair and equitable in order to be driven to succeed.
Lots of good points from all those that responded and I agree. The action taken by this manager is one that could have the potential of tearing at the production and morale of his team. He might as well get ready to watch the numbers take a dive.