How and Why You Should Train Your Managers to Rate Employees It seems so simple. Managers see their employees work eight hours a day, five days a week. They talk with their employees, review their work, and manage projects. They should be able to give honest, accurate performance reviews, right that cover performance and strategic talent alignment? The answer is sadly- probably not. There are a number of potential issues with ratings: raters may have a bias toward individuals, they may tend to rate on one side of a scale (i.e. everyone is wonderful), they may misremember performance, or they may be engaged in organizational politics (Murphy & Cleveland, 1995; Kozlowski, Chao, & Morrison, 1998). Performance management researchers have spent a great deal of time focused on why people who rate employees in PM do such a poor job and coming up with ways to improve the accuracy of ratings.
Individuals may make a number of common errors when giving performance ratings (Murphy & Cleveland, 1995). Leniency errors occur when the individual tends to give high ratings, even if these ratings do not reflect actual job performance. Raters may also engage in range restriction, where all of the ratings are similar (i.e. giving all fives on a 5-point scale). Additionally, halo errors occur when individuals rate specific employees the same way across all performance dimensions. Unfortunately, the research has repeatedly shown that training individuals about rating errors does not improve rating accuracy (Murphy & Cleveland, 1995l Ilgen et al., 1993).
One way to deal with the issue of performance rating errors is to use frame of reference (FOR) training. A well designed FOR program may improve rater accuracy. The training program should include three main elements: performance dimension training, a practice session, and feedback on practice (Hauenstein, 1998). Performance dimension training teaches the raters about what they are actually rating individuals on. It gives them a common standard to set their ratings. The dimension training may include giving definitions of errors, but it should definitely include discussions of the performance standards. It is also important to give raters a chance to practice giving raters based on the set performance standards. Ideally, raters should practice with examples that are very similar to what they see in practice. Performance video vignettes provide a useful tool for practice. The raters should receive feedback based on their ratings in the practice session in order to calibrate their ratings with the set performance standards.
Raters can also be trained to give feedback to employees. Hauenstein (1998) suggests two effective types of feedback. Task-level feedback involves discussing strategies to improve job performance. Motivational feedback involves setting goals and encouraging efforts to perform on the job and is part of a larger talent management strategy. This can also be incorporated into the training program for managers. There are a number of alternative rater training programs, but frame of reference training has shown to be effective. The bottom line is that raters should understand what they are rating, and they should feel confident in their new rating skills.
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