Can't imagine that anything good could come from a negative job evaluation?Think again. A recent study suggests that a bad review can actually make an employee's later job performance seem better than it would had he or she not been evaluated at all.
Researchers at Kansas State University asked 214 college students to play boss for a day and review the work of a secretary whose past performance had been shoddy. Some participants were told merely to familiarize themselves with the secretary's lack of accomplishment, while others had to go a step further and formally rate the worker's performance, much as employers do during annual reviews. Later, all the "bosses" rated the secretary's most recent performance, which had improved to an average level.
Managers who'd been asked to grade the secretary's work the first time around gave the assistant's most recent work higher marks than did the supervisors who'd read about, but didn't judge, the initial poor performance. The reason? Assigning a numerical rating to workers' performance may make the quality of their work concrete. So after a subpar grade, any improvement seems all the more dramatic.
