Santa’s Performance Review
We all hate doing performance reviews- but when I got to thinking about the hardest one to write, well…….. enjoy.
Annual Performance Review
Employee: Claus, Santa
Title: General Manager, Global Distribution
Reports To: CEO, Universe
Communication Skills:
Exceeds Expectations. Employee continues to excel at interpreting vague orders and communicating changing needs to his direct reports. This has become particularly challenging since the advent of email. millions of hand-written notes have been replaced by email from portals such as northpole.com and Santaclaus.com. Peak arrivals number 400,000 up to 5 days before Delivery Date. Formerly hand-written letters would arrive from late November to allow for postal delivery problems and make for easier order fulfillment.
Employee Relations:
Meets Expectations. Employee continues to receive accolades from his direct reports, constangly referred to as “jolly” and “merry”. He is, after all, literally a saint. This is doubly impressive given the special needs and diversity issues inherent ina mixed Human/Elf workplace. Accommodations such as specially sized workbenches and jumpsuits for the new clean room were made in a timely manner to the satisfaction of all.
360 degree feedback continues to be solid, although there were complaints on the confidential employee hotline of reprisals (lumps of coal rather than bonuses) to complainers or those considered “naughty”. No credible witnesses have come forth.
Project Management Skills:
Exceeds Expectations. Rapidly changing product lines continue to offer challenges that the Employee overcomes. There were complaints that there were insufficient training opportunities for existing staff to move from the Wooden/Plastic Toys division to the growing Electronics Department over the last 2-3 years. The Union has filed several grievances which have been satisfied.
Additionally, shorter order cycles (see Communication Skills) means accurate staffing has been a challenge. Employee was able to avoid massive layoffs during the slower season but still met Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The North Pole is a one-industry town, and large numbers of laid off elves would have been a PR problem we didn’t need at this time. Employee really stepped up.
For now, production schedules have stabilized and, barring another introduction of a new game console, should remain steady over the next 12 months.
Succession Planning:
Does Not Meet Expectations. Employee has held his current position for almost 1400 years, ever since his promotion from Bishop of Myra in the Turkish Division. While he has stepped up to the challenges of building a global operation with superb Customer Sat numbers, there are concerns.
He has not identified potential leaders capable of filling his position. Given his age and his overall health and weight (in clear violation of our wellness standards) this is a concern. There is no sign he’s delegating effectively.
HR is concerned and will hold a meeting in the next month to identify candidates- perhaps from the Elf pool and lay out a professional development path.
Summary
Overall, another excellent performance review. Unfortunately his salary was capped 600 years ago, and HR is struggling for reward and recognition opportunities for someone who not only has everything, but gives it away. Issue will be studied at the next HR department meeting.
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:59 am
[...] Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, you will enjoy this post. The always witty Wayne Turmel has done a performance appraisal of Santa. [...]
December 23rd, 2006 at 1:44 pm
[...] The Cranky Middle Manager Show » Santa’s Performance Review [...]
December 24th, 2006 at 3:14 am
Very funny Wayne. Curious…if you were to fire Santa, who would fill his shoes? Hanukkah Harry? Kwanzaa Karl? I know…Festivus Fred!
Happy holidays!
February 15th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
This is hillarious. After a looooonnngggg day of work, this really made my day. I really enjoyed this.
Curious - With no reward and recognition opportunities, how does Santa keep his motivation level high?
I think its the happiness and smiles he brings to everybody is his R and R. What an amazing job he has got.. to bring smiles on every one’s faces and jolly good family time.
April 14th, 2007 at 2:57 am
[...] Performance reviews - why easier isn’t always better My grandmother used to say to me, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. But then again, Granny never gave me an annual performance appraisal (there was no pocket-money-for-performance in our house). Recently we have had several requests for a “writing assistant” as part of the performance management module in ETWeb. In fairness I must say, these requests have come mainly from prospects rather than existing customers. Now we all know how much managers hate doing performance reviews, it is just something that managers have to do. The goal of a “writing assistant” is to help managers formulate the individual appraisals. Tools or wizards are used to help generate the text of the appraisal based on input from the manager. This makes the whole process a lot easier for managers and leads to an improved performance management process. I’m not sure I agree. Sure, this makes the process easier for the manager in question but there is a reason why performance appraisals are hard - because managers need to think about them. Presumably there was a good business case for putting a performance management system in place (I’ll leave that whole discussion for another day). The problem is, once that system’s in place it seems to take on a life of its own. Subsequent actions are geared to making the performance process work, losing sight of the original goals. The typical conversation looks like this: CEO: We just don’t seem to be as effective as our competition at executing our strategy.HR: Maybe our operational efficiency just isn’t up to par. Or maybe it is, and we’re just focusing time and effort in the wrong places.CEO: Well how can we make sure that our people are all doing what they should be doing?HR: A performance management system would let us align goals throughout the organization with our strategic goals.CEO: Perfect! Make it so. … some months later… CEO: So how is our new performance management system working out?HR: Just great! Feedback from managers has been very positive, the automated system has ensured that we don’t put extra workload on our managers and 99.7% of reviews are in on time.CEO: Great job. Sounds like the program has been a great success. And that’s my gripe with a writing assistant. A writing assistant is great for making the whole performance appraisal simpler to get through, but does it really do anything to improve the process? In fact, I would argue the complete opposite. Providing stock answers and template-based reviews actively reduces the quality of feedback - if you give managers an easy option you can be pretty sure they will take it, practically guaranteeing that they don’t take the time to busy themselves with the specifics of the employee in question. Now I’m not saying that making the process easier for the manager is fundamentally a bad idea. But it needs to be done in such a way that it is not detrimental to quality. For example, the performance blog included in ETWeb allows both managers and employees to maintain performance-relevant notes throughout the year. This significantly reduces the recency effect when review time comes around by allowing both sides to review their notes for the whole year. The key to this is making the process as painless as possible - the feature is available right where you need it, a single click, add a quick note and forget about it. Reduced effort, increased quality. So if I’m not a fan of features like writing assistants, why does there nonetheless seem to be demand for them? As already said, there is a temptation once a system is in place to focus on the system for the system’s sake. The other key driver however is legal compliance. This is something that is especially prevalent in the U.S. market due to its litigious nature. In this case, a documented legal trail may well be a very desirable thing. But if that’s the case, we shouldn’t be trying to slide it in under the cover of a performance management system. By implementing tools like writing assistants we seek to simplify the process at the expense of dumbing it down. Instead of fostering a culture of performance improvement we’re just paying lip service to the concept of performance management. And like my grandmother said, that’s not doing the job properly. So what do you think? Are writing assistants the way to go? ExecuTRACK product development is and always has been driven by its customers. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Posted: Friday, April 13, 2007 5:10 PM by n.reed [...]
April 14th, 2007 at 3:12 am
[...] Performance reviews - why easier isn’t always better My grandmother used to say to me, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. But then again, Granny never gave me an annual performance appraisal (there was no pocket-money-for-performance in our house). Recently we have had several requests for a “writing assistant” as part of the performance management module in ETWeb. In fairness I must say, these requests have come mainly from prospects rather than existing customers. Now we all know how much managers hate doing performance reviews, it is just something that managers have to do. The goal of a “writing assistant” is to help managers formulate the individual appraisals. Tools or wizards are used to help generate the text of the appraisal based on input from the manager. This makes the whole process a lot easier for managers and leads to an improved performance management process. I’m not sure I agree. Sure, this makes the process easier for the manager in question but there is a reason why performance appraisals are hard - because managers need to think about them. Presumably there was a good business case for putting a performance management system in place (I’ll leave that whole discussion for another day). The problem is, once that system’s in place it seems to take on a life of its own. Subsequent actions are geared to making the performance process work, losing sight of the original goals. The typical conversation looks like this: CEO: We just don’t seem to be as effective as our competition at executing our strategy.HR: Maybe our operational efficiency just isn’t up to par. Or maybe it is, and we’re just focusing time and effort in the wrong places.CEO: Well how can we make sure that our people are all doing what they should be doing?HR: A performance management system would let us align goals throughout the organization with our strategic goals.CEO: Perfect! Make it so. … some months later… CEO: So how is our new performance management system working out?HR: Just great! Feedback from managers has been very positive, the automated system has ensured that we don’t put extra workload on our managers and 99.7% of reviews are in on time.CEO: Great job. Sounds like the program has been a great success. And that’s my gripe with a writing assistant. A writing assistant is great for making the whole performance appraisal simpler to get through, but does it really do anything to improve the process? In fact, I would argue the complete opposite. Providing stock answers and template-based reviews actively reduces the quality of feedback - if you give managers an easy option you can be pretty sure they will take it, practically guaranteeing that they don’t take the time to busy themselves with the specifics of the employee in question. Now I’m not saying that making the process easier for the manager is fundamentally a bad idea. But it needs to be done in such a way that it is not detrimental to quality. For example, the performance blog included in ETWeb allows both managers and employees to maintain performance-relevant notes throughout the year. This significantly reduces the recency effect when review time comes around by allowing both sides to review their notes for the whole year. The key to this is making the process as painless as possible - the feature is available right where you need it, a single click, add a quick note and forget about it. Reduced effort, increased quality. So if I’m not a fan of features like writing assistants, why does there nonetheless seem to be demand for them? As already said, there is a temptation once a system is in place to focus on the system for the system’s sake. The other key driver however is legal compliance. This is something that is especially prevalent in the U.S. market due to its litigious nature. In this case, a documented legal trail may well be a very desirable thing. But if that’s the case, we shouldn’t be trying to slide it in under the cover of a performance management system. By implementing tools like writing assistants we seek to simplify the process at the expense of dumbing it down. Instead of fostering a culture of performance improvement we’re just paying lip service to the concept of performance management. And like my grandmother said, that’s not doing the job properly. So what do you think? Are writing assistants the way to go? ExecuTRACK product development is and always has been driven by its customers. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Posted: Friday, April 13, 2007 5:10 PM by n.reed Filed under: ETWeb, Performance Management [...]
May 31st, 2007 at 5:36 pm
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