Turn Your Performance Review System Into One That Works

"Straight A Leadership: Alignment, Action, Accountability"

Performance reviews get a bad rap these days. Employees dread them, vacillating between cynical eye rolls and desperate last-minute bids to suck up to the boss before review time. Managers see them as an obligation to plow through before they can mark one more task off their endless to-do lists. But performance reviews themselves aren’t the problem—it’s the way companies handle the review process that’s flawed.

Performance reviews are necessary, as I explain in my book Straight A Leadership: Alignment, Action, Accountability (Fire Starter Publishing, 2009), but you can change this event from something you endure into a rewarding transforming process.

When performance reviews are done properly, people actually like them. Employees want to know how they’re doing. They want to connect with their managers. Reviews give leaders an opportunity to measure performance results, reward great employees, and move not-so-great ones up or out.

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Comments

The main problem? Using reviews for too much

I agree with a lot of what's said here. But I think the trouble with what's been traditionally called the "performance review" is that it incorporates an individual's performance vs. corporate goals, AND opportunities for personal improvement, AND justification for pay raises, AND documented evidence for removing poor performers. The objectives for those are often at cross-purposes, making the reviewee defensive and the reviewer (who is not God and knows it) frustrated.
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I believe that real value-added performance reviews split out the productive from the bureaucratic. The "review" focuses on how well the individual is contributing to the organization's goals, and what is within the reviewee's power to improve that, and to make him or her more valuable to the organization. (This includes, by the way, what the supervisor or manager can do to help the reviewee accomplish more.) Keep pay raise review a separate activity. The top performers know who they are, anyway.
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And I wouldn't use the review as evidence to help make a case for termination. How could anyone walk into a review like that with an outlook that supports positive feedback and improvement? Use a separate "probation" process that includes formal notification to a poor performer, distinct performance goals in a defined period, and the opportunity for mentoring. That has the added benefit of not poisoning the atmosphere of reviews - everyone gets reviews, but only the poor performers get probation.
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Jeff Jackson
Director of Quality
Orion Systems, Inc.

Additions to performance review system

I agree with the recommendations here and would add that in the conversation there needs to be a buy-in piece that is gained through input and revision with the employee. They have a perspective and insight that could enhance the performance goals and review. Engaging them in the process shows your openness and commitment to their success.

Jim Nelson, SSBB, CMQ/OE
Clarosys, LLC
Systems for Success
612-618-0662
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimjnelson