Ah, the sounds of the season. Year-end stress around reporting, employee documentation and payroll. Isn’t it a lovely din?
In many organizations, a portion of the stress is found in the characterization funnel regarding worth. And before you conjure up beer funnel images of your college bravado, a characterization funnel is quite different. It’s the forced subjective employee personality and effort review that management creates through calendar-based compensation incentives. During this time of year, bonuses and raises may be offered and require managers to determine what and how much.
Of course, if you ask most organizational leaders, they may share the objective-based criteria used in offering those bonuses. They will regale you with tales as to how much effort went into developing these performance-based metrics and deciding upon which areas to measure. It’s a beautiful tale of meetings and emails validating some sort of “process” mechanic. But truth be told, much of that gathered data is then filtered through the characterization funnel, and its veracity is tarnished.
Managers don’t want to end the year by demotivating hard-working team members by crushing their hopes for a certain amount of bonus, or even a bonus at all. “Happy Holidays, Fred. I know you’ve increased productivity by 15%, but to qualify for a bonus, you had to have increased it by 23%. So sorry, but thanks for trying.” Really? Who wants to tell someone that? Usually not the supervisor.
Instead, we tweak the results. “While it may be true that productivity was measured at a 15% increase, we have to give credit to Fred because he lost two employees during the peak season. He really stepped up. I think he should get the bonus in light of that.” Have you been in the room for these conversations? Yes. Yes, you have. So, what’s the answer?
Think through these initial steps and challenge the reliability of the current year-end process. Fight the characterization funnel and move beyond old school thinking. There are 12 months in a year. 12. Share the love throughout the year.