STEPPING OUT OF THE MISTAKEN ASPECTS
OF PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

By Mr. Liu Kang

Performance evaluation, connecting all kinds of works in HR management practice, is the core of HR management practice. Many things such as recruiting and arranging, training and developing, salary and welfare, development of career and selecting cadre are all related with performance evaluation. So, the successful performance evaluation system is a very necessary part of contemporary HR management.

However, in the transformation from traditional personnel management to contemporary HR management, people often make some mistakes when they design performance evaluation system. It can make the performance evaluation system full of deficiency or even thorough failure. If people can definite these possible mistaken aspects of the system, they can take some measures to avoid it as much as possible.

The first mistaken aspect：Traditional negative culture and ideology affect the operation of evaluation system. Chinese traditional culture is very wide in contents, among which some can’t adapt to the social development. Inevitably these affect the performance evaluation system. The typical examples are the thought of following others, paying too much attention to office, the human relationship and one’s connection circle. The thought of following others reflects in performance evaluation in the form of same result for everyone without any difference. The ideology of paying too much attention to officers reflects in performance evaluation in the form of stressing political attainment and stressing the ideology of officials. The human relationship and one’s connection circle reflect in the performance evaluation in the form that if you have good relations to the man, the result of testing and assessing is better than those you have bad relations to. Vice versa.

The second mistaken aspect：There is no analysis of positions. In Chinese enterprise, people have not paid much attention to position analysis and the position duty is ambiguous. On one hand, the judging gist whether a project has been accomplished or not is in need .As a result it is hard to define position object, which leads to the difficulty in doing scientific evaluation. On the other hand, there are some differences in different position’s workloads and even in the same grade, people have the different workloads and the work varies much in difficulty extent. This often leads to such a condition: people who do heavy work and do hard work aren’t selected to be the excellent ones.

The third mistaken aspect：The top leader decides the evaluation results. Leaders in every stage have the right to revise his member’s remarks. Although there may be difference in the eyes of every superior, at last the result is decided by the top leader. So, on the one hand, the direct superior of the member will lose his responsibility sense because he doesn’t have real power; on the other hand, the members may not obey their direct superior for the superior doesn’t have authority. Then the employees will contact the more senior leader, which may disturb the normal order. In addition, the final arbitrament lies in the hands of the top leaders as in many conditions the result of the evaluation is sent to the top leaders to get approved. As a result, members will transfer the discontent to the most senior leader because of the dissatisfaction with results of testing and assessing. In the actual world, the discontent to the leaders comes into being in this way.

The fourth mistaken aspect：People adapt unitary and simple criterions. With such criterion, the results are ambiguous and of great warp in practice. As a result, choosing the advanced people becomes the choosing the man who has good relations with other people; selecting cadre becomes making balance, which results in taking turns in elevating the post. Besides, such criterions have a tendency to be machine-made. No matter the senior leaders or junior or middle members, they are assessed by the same criterion .The objective fact that different men have different abilities is not taken into considerations.

The fifth mistaken aspect：Equals evaluation with inspection. Though evaluation and inspection just differ from each in one word in Chinese, the meanings are quite different. The difference of the two mainly shows in their methods, narration of the contents, and the expression of the effect. As to inspection, it mainly takes the form of conversation and comprehension of the facts. People lay stress on the inspection of one’s performance previous to his elevation, rather than the yearly inspection or the inspection of certain project. It has become an invisible custom that he who is inspected is going to be elevated, those who are not inspected aren’t going to be elevated at all. As to narration of the inspection, it is empty in contents, with a pile of merits and little description of the shortcomings. It doesn’t touch the essential problems at all. Quite often it lacks in the scientific assessment of the achievements, for an achievement can be owned to all persons. As to the expression of the result, it takes the form of inspection report, talking in generals and ending as soon as it meets the criterion without further improvement.

The sixth mistaken aspects: Its operation is unclear and lacks feedback. The previous personnel evaluation is very subjective, having no external materials, which can be opened to the public. Maybe the person in charge is unwilling to admit his mistake in the face of the employees, so the person in charge just sends the tables to the ministry of personnel soon after the tables are finished. As a result, the employees don’t know the evaluation of their own work and lack the incentive to improve the performances. So the evaluation of the performance can’t have the stimulant effect as it is expected.

The seventh mistaken aspects: No personal conversations with the employees about the result of the evaluation. The personal conversation can effectively check the present performance of the employees; as a result employees have the chance to come up with the methods to improve the performance. The person in charge also can take the opportunity to amend the work responsibility, goal, and target of the performance of the employees. And he can also get to know whether the employees need further training or tutorship. In addition, the personal conversation about the evaluation can develop a contact for the person in charge and the employees.