Many agencies have been quick to follow the trend of reorganizing employees into teams led by coaches or team leaders, but one problem still lurks: How do such leaders measure individuals' performance while focusing on team goals?
The Office of Personnel Management doesn't allow agencies to rate employees entirely on team performance, so managers must set goals for both the team and its individual members.
"Allowing a non-performer to 'ride' the efforts of other team members and accrue all the entitlements that fully successful performance conveys would violate the fundamental principles of individual accountability on which the ... merit system principles rest," OPM says in its guide on the topic, Performance Appraisal for Teams: An Overview.
Team performance can be measured in various ways, such as amount of work completed and customer satisfaction. But when it comes time for performance appraisals, it is more difficult to decide how much each team member contributed to the team's accomplishments. There are several factors to consider when conducting such evaluations, OPM says.
To begin with, look at how well the employee works with other team members. Factors such as participating in meetings, volunteering for team projects and simply being pleasant to work with contribute volumes to a team's work. By setting a range of standards for contributing to teams, managers can more readily assess how each individual is performing, OPM says.
For example, employee participation is critical to teamwork. Good team members always do their fair share of work during group projects. But an outstanding team member "is always willing to 'jump in' and lend a hand to accomplish 'must-do' work," the handbook says.
The same type of grading scale can be applied to other important team skills, such as dealing with people, communicating orally and writing reports, OPM says.
A team's performance can also be incorporated into an individual employee's performance appraisal, but only as a non-critical element. Non-critical elements are those that affect an aspect of performance and are used in the final appraisal, but for which the employee cannot be held individually accountable.
Agencies cannot rate employees exclusively on team performance. Conversely, agencies cannot use critical elements-those that establish individual accountability-for measuring team performance.