What is a bigger problem: Managing employee appraisals or writing accurate appraisals?

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: December 24th, 2008

While, I was organizing a software training workshop for a major Electric Power Distribution Employee Appraisal Training Corporation in New Delhi, I asked Vikram Singh, one of the participating Senior Managers, who has a team size of 150 employees for performance review, “What is the bigger problem when conducting employee appraisals: managing appraisals or writing accurate appraisals?“.

[Background: This 2,500 employee big company opted for EmpXtrack Performance Management System. Prior to using a web-based performance management system, they used paper based appraisal forms.]

“I have a team of 150 people to review, for me managing employee appraisals is a bigger problem. With an experience of 10 years, writing accurate appraisal is not so difficult. It may be difficult for younger managers but not for an experienced one.“, said Vikram. He continued, “For senior managers like me who also have to review appraisal of my juniors’ teams (I have 8 juniors managing teams of 15-20 each), managing appraisals is a far bigger problem. There is already a long list of urgent tasks with me and then managing 150 employee appraisals, usually in a span of 1 month. It makes me sweat.”

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Posted in: Employee Appraisals, HR Technology, HRMS (HRIS), Human Resources, Performance Management | 11 Comments »

Successfactors of a Leader – Remembering Names

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: December 10th, 2008

Sometimes back I wrote a post ‘What’s in the name? SuccessFactors for HR‘ where I mentioned the special skill of an HR manager who knows every employee by name. While I was reviewing a new feature in the software EmpXtrack, called Employee Hierarchy (similar to an Organization Chart), I recollected a motivating incident.

How to Win Friends and Influence People It was in the beginning of year 2002, I worked with a business process outsourcing organization. One day I was working quite late and trying to finish a training project before leaving for the day. The Managing Director, Mr. Aashish, just passed by and saw me. Five minutes back, he came back to my desk and said ,”Hi Gireesh, why are you working so late today?” The rest was a normal chit chat.

This incident left me highly motivated for many months to come. I was amazed by the fact that my Managing Director knew me by name, while I was merely a grass-root level executive, almost a nobody in the organization which was 2500 big. Sometimes later I discussed this incident with my manager and he revealed that on seeing me working so late, MD has called him just to ask my name.

Later on a friend’s recommendation I read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. In this book Dale Carnegie (Section “Six Ways to Make People Like You”)says, “Remember that a man’s Name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”, which highlights how important it is to remember and call people by name.

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Posted in: HR Best Practices, HRMS (HRIS), Human Resources | 1 Comment »

Do your rewards motivate or else!

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: December 4th, 2008

During one of my conversation with a CEO of a start-up company the discussion turned towards Compensation Planning to motivate employees, especially the talented ones. It was agreed that the most talented ones need a continuous motivation to maintain their momentum. During the discussion, the CEO narrated one of his bad experiences about one of his talented employees, whom he admired, wanted to reward, motivate and compensate appropriately.

Tom worked with John, the CEO of the company, and was a very talented employee who worked diligently. John being happy with the Tom’s work, rewarded him with a cash prize of $ 1000 (which was a significant amount ), in anticipation that Tom will be motivated to perform better. He also had lots of plans for Tom in the back of his mind. Both Tom and John seemed happy and thought that they did a good job.

Contrary to John’s belief Tom submitted his resignation within a much shorter span. During his exit interview, Tom did not state any specific reason for his resignation too (although, it was found later that he left for a better compensation package). His resignation came as a shock to John, who was genuinely interested in retaining good employees and did all what he could do to ensure it.