Friday, June 8, 2012

Feedback


What role does feedback play in Performance Management?  To answer this question, we´l l have to first answer a more fundamental question ´How does a manager arrive at a proposed rating for an employee?´

A Manager relies on his own judgment & employee´s self assessment– that´s what I have been used to seeing for a long time.

But in new context, I find that a manager additionally relies heavily on feedback received from others. There even is a feedback framework in place – employees use a feedback tool to request feedback and to give feedback.  Tool sees heavy 2 way traffic.  

So why do I see this change?

I think 2 primary reasons are:

·         Ecosystem -  I frequently hear here word ecosystem being used to describe number & variety of stakeholders one works with.  The circle of interaction and influence is not only within your team and teams/leaders you support. It is a matrix structure. Number of stakeholders potentially impacted is fairly higher than in a functional role based setup.

·         Manager´s role description– Most Managers here have a healthy mix of People Management and Individual contributor responsibilities. A Manager is accountable for his own performance and his team´s performance. Hence need for a Manager to balance his time.

Given these 2 realities, a feedback tool seems relevant to provide a manager more holistic visibility about his reportee´s performance.

Would such a tool be relevant for setups where above mentioned 2 realities are not so prevalent?

Manager´s judgment is paramount. But feedback is necessary to enable manager to take a better decision. So a feedback tool may not be necessary, but a feedback framework – on how employees request, give, & receive feedback – does make sense for all setups.

-
Sourav

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