The end of December is soon approaching and both supervisors and staff will have to face the annual dreaded Performance Evaluation Report (PER).
Why this exercise becomes dreadful is also because it is an annual event. That so many months have passed since January tends to make both supervisor and staffer think of the more recent months. Therefore, what really happens is that staffs are evaluated on perhaps the last 4-6 months of the year and not the entire year. I have personally experienced doing great work for 11.5 months and some thing goes wrong (like speaking my mind or being candid or blunt at a meeting) in the last two weeks of the year and that issue sticks out in the supervisors brain overshadowing all the good deeds of previous weeks and months.
While the UN PER system is full of error (both negligent and willful bias and divergent individual standard settings of what is an outstanding, average, and poor performance) making it an annual event acerbates the error profile.
What UNICEF may consider is a web-based PER system that will be much shorter than the annual review and could complete at least every three months. There are systems out there in the market place that may tailor to UNICEF’s needs.
There should be no need for HRM to send out annual reminders to supervisors about the PER due date when these could be automated by computer. Auto emailing will ensure that the PER’s complete on time. A web-based system will also give senior management the information on the reviews completed and those outstanding. In addition, as the PER is pushed upwards for review, senior managers can make their comments direct to the web-based system rather than a paper-driven system.
Ideally, PER’s are better managed as an ongoing process throughout the year than making it an annual ordeal.
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