Whether at the company or departmental level, today´s organizations are finding that their work is increasingly oriented around projects that bring together staff from different groups. This raises questions about evaluating individuals´ performance when project assignments remove them from the direct supervision of their functional department manager.
Moreover, unlike traditional performance evaluation, which takes place around points of the calendar such as midyear and end-of-year reviews, project-centric performance focuses on crucial tasks that have specific objectives, as well as clear start and end dates.
In a project-centric organization, team structures are dynamic; employees may work with a different set of people and different project managers from one month to the next. Similarly, their customers and partners may change from one project to the next. Roles and responsibilities are determined by current projects, and relationships with co-workers tend to be more collaborative and role-based than in traditional organizational structures.
From a top-down to a multi-rater process
In the traditional performance-management process, the supervisor sits down with a staff member at the beginning of the year to lay out objectives and discuss how performance will be measured. A midyear checkpoint provides an occasion for feedback, and the year-end review evaluates progress against the goals set at the beginning. The resulting performance rating drives salary adjustments and bonuses.
In a project-centric organization, accurate information about employee performance will often come from other sources, particularly project managers and teammates-those with whom a person works most closely. This suggests a need to move away from a top-down performance management process and into amulti-raterfeedback system. Two variations of a multi-rater system are the "360 degree," in which performance feedback comes from all directions (project manager, teammates, and customers), and the "180 degree," in which feedback comes from above (managers) and below (customers). A third variation, with feedback coming from managers and teammates but not customers, might be called the "270 degree." In any case, the point is to get input from those who are closest to the individual´s actual job performance.
Challenges in moving toward multi-rater feedback
The first challenge for managers and supervisors when implementing multi-rater feedback is determining who is best positioned to evaluate an individual employee. It´s obviously not wise to ask people which of their teammates would be the best evaluators; they would naturally name those likeliest to give them positive ratings. On the other hand, it´s not such a good idea to ask for volunteer evaluators from an employee´s team, because that invites those with an axe to grind to step forward and skew the ratings in an unfairly negative direction.
How should a manager or supervisor approach this question?
- Identify the people each employee interacts with the most. On a project involving 20 people, for example, chances are a given person works most closely with, say, a half-dozen teammates. Those are the ones likely to provide the best-informed feedback.
- Seek feedback from the project manager, the person most responsible for team assignments and the overall success of a project.
A "270 degree" approach such as this does not automatically provide a perfect solution, but as an organization becomes more experienced at project-centric performance evaluation, it will get better and better at identifying the most appropriate raters.
Training.
Supervisors are commonly trained in how to evaluate staff. Moving to multi-rater evaluation introduces feedback from people who may not have such training. They haven´t been taught, for example, how to focus strictly on performance and not on personal likes or dislikes, and they might not know how to constructively help a person overcome a performance weakness. All who provide feedback need to be trained properly.
One way to approach this problem is to provide coaching for peer evaluators. For example, co-workers might be encouraged to write a first draft of their feedback and then get help finalizing it from a coach who is experienced in peer reviewing.
Timing and frequency of evaluation.
The traditional calendar-based review schedule usually doesn´t fit a project-centric work system. If a project starts in June and runs through September, a midyear review on June 30 would be premature; the annual review on December 31 would be too late to provide feedback that would help staff members as they move on to new projects in October. A review soon after project completion is more appropriate.
On the other hand, for longer projects lasting, say, two years or more, waiting until the project´s final review doesn´t help with feedback along the way, let alone salary and bonus decisions.
How to set the frequency and timing of evaluations?
- Establish goals at the beginning of the project, so it´s clear what each person´s roles and responsibilities are and how their performance will be measured.
- Work with the project manager to determine key milestones. Project completion is one obvious milestone, but there may be intermediary points at which feedback is useful. If it´s a systems implementation project, for example, a key milestone might be the completion of documenting business requirements. At that point an employee´s role might be changing, so feedback would be important before moving on.
Cooperation between supervisors and project managers.
In a traditionally structured organization, one person generally plays the role of both project/task manager and supervisor/career manager. In project-centric organizations, the trend is for these roles to be split between a project manager and a "people manager," or supervisor. That puts a premium on how the two work together. Some companies look toward matrixed organizational structures-dual reporting structures-as a solution, but unless there is perfect clarity in how responsibilities are divided and communicated, matrixed organizations can create more problems than they resolve.
Whether an organization is matrixed or not, the challenge is to be crystal-clear about managerial roles. An individual´s functional or departmental supervisor manages that person´s career performance and determines what kinds of projects the employee can work on effectively. The project manager is responsible for the project: making it clear to all what they have to do, and then making sure they´re actually doing it.
Tackling the challenges
Implementing effective performance management within a project-centric organization requires a number of key steps:
- Define roles and responsibilities - and document them.
- Decide whether you want a matrixed organization or not. If so, make sure the reporting structures are clearly drawn and carefully communicated to all.
- If you implement multi-rater feedback, develop the process carefully. Be aware that handling the multiple points of feedback for each employee will likely require increasing your administrative staff or implementing systems that collate all feedback and render it into a consolidated rating for each employee.
- If your company has an enterprise-wide project management system in place, consider integrating your performance rating process into it. That can help in scheduling the reviews, determining who should provide input, and linking the input to HR.
Fumiko Kondo is the Managing Director at Intellilink Solutions, Inc. - a boutique consulting firm specializing in automating knowledge worker organizations. Her areas of expertise include; talent management, resource management, IT governance and organizational change. She can be reached at info@intellilink.com
