Keeping a Performance Diary: Pros and Cons

Quoted from:  GNEIL LIBRARY

How can managers best gather information for performance reviews? Some HR trainers recommend that they keep a diary. Should you, an HR manager, pitch the practice to those in your company? Here are some points to weigh.

A Diary Is Good, Because…
A diary helps supervisors rate performance over the entire work period. Without it, bosses usually base their judgment on employees’ recent performance because it’s uppermost in their minds. For their part, workers may try to cash in on the halo effect by performing at their peak during the last few weeks before their review to sway the boss’s judgment in their favor.

A diary also helps managers accumulate important information in one location. Without it, they may find themselves sifting through a hodgepodge of notes, memos, and production reports in a last-minute scramble to round up the facts they need to justify a rating.

And speaking of justifying ratings, this ongoing record of specific incidents—including dates, times, locations, names of participants, and other key facts—surely beats undocumented recollections or gut feelings. That’s especially true when disgruntled employees appeal a boss’s evaluation to the next level or file a grievance with the union.

In addition, the discipline of keeping a diary can discourage procrastination. Many supervisors loathe doing ratings because (a) they don’t like to discuss workers’ shortcomings, and (b) they’d rather spend the time on more pressing tasks. In either case, some bosses postpone facing the dragon until the bitter end. That can produce inflated ratings, either because the boss wanted to avoid a confrontation or because there wasn’t enough hard data to support criticisms.

Aside from its contribution to performance appraisals, a diary also helps supervisors confirm promotional decisions, make specific training and development recommendations, and defend disciplinary actions as well.


But On the Other Hand…
Keeping a diary is, of course, a double-edged sword. Make sure that supervisors recognize the possible pitfalls. These include:

1. Potential morale problems, Employees should not know you’re keeping a diary, but word may leak out. Knowing that the boss keeps a running record of significant incidents makes workers uncomfortable. What’s he got in there anyhow?
2. Falling into the wrong hands, This would be a major catastrophe. Diary-keepers should follow these tips for safeguarding the information:
• Keep its existence a secret. Store it on a diskette away from the office—never on a hard drive.
• Lock the file with a password that no one else knows or might guess. This prevents a disgruntled spouse or child from opening it in a fit of anger and sending a copy to employees.
• Don’t make a backup disk unless absolutely necessary. Two copies are twice as risky as one.
• If you print out information, select only what’s needed, not the whole file. Shred the hard copy ASAP.
3. Recording only negative information, Unless they make efforts to the contrary, some managers will tend to note only bad news, thinking that they’ll remember flattering facts easily enough.

Not likely. It’s important to keep a balanced record. This isn’t to say the ratio of positive to negative entries should be one to one, only that bosses should jot down good things along with the bad whenever possible.

Updating can be a chore. It’s easy to put off entering new material until “later.” Unfortunately, “later” may be days away. In the meantime, lots of important information will be forgotten. Managers who keep a diary must make it a living document. Update it promptly when noteworthy events occur.


A Controversial Idea...

If you mention performance diaries in your management training, make sure to acknowledge their pros and cons; don’t give the idea a blanket endorsement. Because the risks may outweigh the benefits, leave the final decision up to each supervisor—while reminding them they must use some objective method to support their appraisals.