It seems everyone hates the annual performance review.
Managers hate writing them. Employees hate receiving them. Human resource pros hate chasing managers down to do them and talking to unhappy employees about their appraisals. Why do we even bother?
The goal of the performance appraisal, I think, is two-fold:
- Have an ongoing discussion with the employees about their performance – what they’re doing well, and where they need work.
- Have written documentation of employee performance, for promotions, discipline, and so on.
The traditional performance appraisal seems pretty ineffective at achieving either of those goals.
Many managers avoid performance conversations all year – until the appraisal roles around. And then when they’re forced to talk about performance, they fear having uncomfortable conversations, so they overrate poor performers, underrate good ones, or play favorites. That makes the appraisals an ineffective tool to either communicate performance or to document it.
So how do we fix the performance management? Hold managers accountable for being managers.
Frank Roche from Know HR advocates something called the daily performance review.
Managers should be having conversations every day (or at least every week) with their employees about their performance. These don’t have to be stuffy, awkward affairs – just a casual “here’s what you’re doing great and here’s where I think you need some work” kind of discussion.
Since documentation is a goal of the appraisal, too, require the manager to write a short paragraph about the discussion, summarizing the key points. If your Legal team needs something more official, both the manager and employee can sign it.
How much more painless would that be? The key thing is that it needs to happen every week. That makes it easier to give timely and relevant feedback, and makes the process a lot more manageable than writing a massive appraisal once a year.
This process would be something managers would themselves be evaluated and goaled on. Ongoing communication around performance (a.k.a. helping your people become rockstars) is what being a manager is all about.
More on the Daily Performance Review:
- Did you do your daily performance review?
- Annual performance reviews don’t work
- Do performance appraisals like Al
Some articles defending the annual appraisal process:
Why people hate performance appraisals:
- Performance Evaluations: Do They Do More Harm Than Good?
- Performance reviews are a big fat waste of time
- Five reasons pay-for-performance fails
“Abolishing Performance Appraisals” is an excellent read on this subject.
Thanks for the tip, Christina! Do you happen to have a link?
http://tinyurl.com/abol-perf
(Amazon.com)
Thanks!
Chris: I picked this up via my friends at Rypple. Great stuff, thanks for making it clean and simple. I will share inside at IDEO.
John, thanks for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed it!
OMG – I can’t get a manager to document a performance failure – how am I going to get them to a) talk to their employee and b) document what they spoke about and c) on a daily basis?
I don’t think abolishing the Evaluation is the right answer. I do think we, as HR professionals, need to find the right way to train managers and supervisors on how to do an evaluation correctly. We should model the right way; we should coach and counsel. But eliminate? Nah…call me a traditionalist :)
@Karen – I absolutely agree: Our key role is helping managers become more effective managers. Managers who won’t document performance issues? I’d fix that issue first. But I don’t see how that’s a good reason to keep in place a tool that just doesn’t work. What benefit do you feel comes from an annual performance appraisal that wouldn’t come from a more regular, less formal conversation?
Thanks for the comment, and cool site. What do you do?