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EVERYONE HATES PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

Guest post by: G.J. Miller

Article Overview: Leaders and employees alike. Most managers hate doing them. Employees hate them too – even those that are over achieving. Is it time to get rid of them?

EVERYONE HATES PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

We know from our experience:
 Managers and employees hate the performance review process. Even high performers
 No-one wants to fail – they are either in the wrong job or lack clear direction and guidance
 Some managers are better at performance reviews than others – causing inequities and demotivation within the team
 Some managers are not able to deliver bad news
 Some managers have “favourites”
 An ill conceived goal and inaccurate assessment can be more damaging than no goals or discussion at all
 Managers have so many priorities and business issues to deal with that performance reviews are low on their priority list even if they know they should do them
 Employees wait all year sometimes to hear a good word about their performance – and are sometimes disappointed
 Employees really just want to know what their increase will be
 90% of employees already know if they have done a good job or not
 There will always be people who seduce the canine and need to leave the organization – performance reviews provide documentation but don’t take action
 No matter how simple you think the performance review process is, managers will feel it is too complex
What needs to happen (and it’s good practice anyway)::
 Hire the right (competent) person to do the job (technical skills) with the right attitude (behavoural skills) and you spend less time managing them
 Give competent people clear goals; competent people just want to know what they have to get done not the details of how
 Tell them how they will be measured; Competent people just want to know how to know they have accomplished the objective in the organizations’ eyes (metrics).
 Say thanks but you don’t have to over do it; competent people don’t need a lot of kudos
 Make it clear and let them run; competent people expect their bosses to remove barriers – not micro manage
 Train everyone; Leaders AND employees need to be trained in any program; not only so that the playing field is even but because if employees take some responsibility it fosters ownership and alleviates the leaders’ workload.

There is methodology that stems from the business strategy and planning cycle that organizations already do, that can be used to spin off an entirely different process; not the traditional performance review process. Organizations can remove the review process if they do it right and with commitment.

Related Articles
  Here Is A Quick Way To Improve Your Performance Review
  How to Deal: Performance Reviews
  If You Haven’t Already, STOP Doing Annual Performance Reviews
  Standardizing Performance Reviews
  Managing Performance: How To Conduct A Performance Review Right

Article Tags: attitude, bad news, business issues, competent person, demotivation, good job, good word, guidance, inequities, kudos, metrics, objective, organization performance, performance reviews, priorities, priority, train



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