Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER SEPTEMBER 2019 NEWS 7 To pay employees accurately and on time To keep organizations compliant To help YOU Pay Yourself First NATIONAL PAYROLL WEEK SEPTEMBER 9-13, 2019 #PAYROLLHASTHEPOWER Talk to your payroll professional and download free resources at payroll.ca/NPW Eighty-five per cent of workers inclined to quit after 'unfair' performance reviews More than half of employees say they are likely to leave employer while regular check-in sessions are favoured over annual ones, finds survey BY JOHN DUJAY IT'S A DREADED time of year for many, but employers might want to take note: Employees who think they have had an "unfair" performance review could very well quit, according to a study. Eighty-five per cent of workers questioned by employee manage- ment company Reflektive said they would consider leaving their employer after receiving what they perceived to be an unfair appraisal. More than half (51.7 per cent) would be extremely or very likely to leave after an unfair review, with a further 33.5 per cent of workers somewhat likely to leave, found the survey of 1,017 U.S. workers. Defining 'unfair' But what exactly does unfair mean to employees? The wrong messages provided by the em- ployer around the review process could be one reason for a nega- tive perception, says John Smith, director of enterprise business solutions at Corporate Renais- sance Group in Ottawa. "Most of the time, the unfair- ness comment is going to come from 'I didn't know that was the expectation,' or 'I thought that ex- pectation had changed,'" he says. "Underlying it is probably that 'We decided and communicated something different during the year, but it's not reflected here,' or 'That wasn't my understanding.'" It's up to the employer to prop- erly structure the review process with the right kind of measuring tools, according to Evangeline Berube, vice-president at Robert Half in Edmonton. That means having more objective elements of a performance review versus subjective components. "That's where things can be- come a bit dicey from people thinking that there might be fa- vouritism... If your performance appraisals are largely set up to be based more on direct KPIs (key performance indicators) — numbers that can't necessarily be argued with or can be defended — then I think there's less of that perception of favouritism because it's fairly black and white, whether or not you're meeting or exceed- ing — or not meeting — certain KPIs," she says. "Some objective ones would be your department, their goal for the next quarter is to generate $200,000 in revenue. And you ei- ther meet that or you don't. Or let's say, if you're in a sales role, you have to meet with 40 clients in a quarter." Prejudice is also something that should be eliminated to reduce feelings of unfairness. "Bias is an enormous factor in the performance-review process and it's for that reason that they are often unsuccessful in coach- ing, motivating or addressing problems," says Kaneez Jaffer, vice-president of HR consulting at JungoHR in Toronto. But it can be multi-faceted, ac- cording to Smith, citing as an ex- ample the "halo effect" — where a manager thinks everybody on their team is a star. "You could have recency bias in there, where managers only remember what happened in the last six weeks and judge the en- tire year of performance based on their memory of the last six weeks," he says. "What we're trying to get to in the performance-manager world really is evidence-based, objec- tive, multi-point check-ins during the process so that, throughout the year, we can change course, we can add new objectives, but we're commenting on why we changed course." The compensation question When the respondents to the Re- flektive survey were asked what they appreciate about the review process, 32 per cent answered: "I get a raise at the end." In many organizations, it's un- fortunate that the performance review becomes a process that's used to determine compensation, says Smith. "It doesn't necessarily stand on its own as a process that's used to motivate employees and coach employees. The organizations that get it have a process in place that's used to motivate and coach and think forward-looking." Employees looking to move upward in the company must un- derstand how the performance review process can facilitate that effort, says Berube. "If they want to look at getting raises or climbing the corporate ladder, or… getting promotions, they understand that the perfor- mance appraisal process is really critical. It's really important that an organization says to people, 'Hey, you're doing great, and thank you REVIEWS > pg.12 "Bias is an enormous factor in the performance-review process and it's for that reason that they are often unsuccessful in coaching, motivating or addressing problems."

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