Employee performance reviews are fairly pervasive for most jobs, but have you ever asked yourself what is achieved?
At least weekly, I am asked for feedback or thoughts on a recent commercial interaction, most obviously for one-time transactions with a company rendering services; e.g., lawn service, gutter cleaning, teeth cleaning, financial, etc. Year over year, these requests increase (prefaced with, « And anything other than 5’s is considered a failure… ») and you start questioning the value-add. Tipping is a form of review. Returning or repeating customers are definitely a review of the services provided. Is there any actual value? But I digress. . .
Image Source: « White Collar, c. 1940 – Linocuts by Giacomo G. Patri » by Thomas Shahan 3 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
In the United States, employee performance reviews are fairly de rigueur and pervasive for most jobs, especially for white-collar positions, but have you ever asked yourself what is achieved? Leaders can’t wait to discuss ongoing problems if the problems would worsen. Performance improvement plans are often a precursor for firing chronic under-performers (except at Netflix). Career roadmap discussions or changes in career goals need to happen more than once per year. So what is the intended purpose of an annual performance review?
My manager at my second full-time job started my review with the following statement:
I have not done my job if you hear anything that we haven’t previously discussed.- Jim D, CSC Consulting manager
I found this incredibly useful and insightful, and often share this with managers and peers: feedback – positive or negative – should be in the moment, relevant, and continual for maximum impact. Of course, that assumes your manager actually tracks your work, which I’ve discovered is often not the case: multiple managers have asked me to write reviews for their peers!
Performance reviews, in my opinion, are a perfunctory, HR activity rather than anything useful, and in the last 15 years, I have basically stopped any active participation, just the bare minimum effort to keep my manager out of trouble.My Turning Point
I completed my first full year at Fortune 50 Company X, and, as expected, the new calendar year starts the performance review cycle. Performance reviews are serious business here: formalized, 360-degree feedback, scored, and time-consuming. If the scuttlebutt is correct, each year the lowest 10% are released to challenge and refresh the employee base.
