It's the season for many employee performance reviews. Why do they seem to rank alongside root canal dental work on our list of things we look forward to as managers and employees? And what are we doing about it?
If we assume that the basic purpose of employee evaluations is to build better-performing organizations, then this has to be one of the most important things we do as managers. But if formal evaluations weren't required, would we even provide them?
Much of this season's debate has centered around whether a forced ranking system works in such efforts. It was given visibility by its adoption at GE several years ago, where managers were forced to identify their direct reports in three categories on a "vitality curve": the top 20 percent, the "vital" 70 percent, and the bottom 10 percent. (Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, these are the de facto percentages used in the forced ranking system for students in required courses at this institution.) Although the system has been modified somewhat in its application, it still triggers advice to those being ranked, especially those in the bottom category who may be given help or advised to leave the organization.
Proponents of forced ranking claim that it is more humane and effective than most qualitative systems for employee appraisal in which employees don't receive frank appraisals because managers are not able or willing to give them. This helps avert surprises, or worse, lawsuits, when poorly-performing employees are fired. Opponents claim that it hurts such things as teamwork and innovation. What little research there is on forced ranking systems suggests that they produce a short-term improvement in performance that soon levels out, perhaps because the worst performers are weeded out in a timely fashion.
Perhaps a more important issue is the objective of the review itself. Is it to weed out poor performers? To recognize the so-called A players? To provide the basis for compensation decisions? To provide clues to future opportunity within the organization? To map out an individual plan for personal development? All of these? Too often this is unclear. Is it any wonder then that managers, many of whom receive little or no training in how to do it, conduct the task of reviewing performance so poorly?
The questions all of this brings to mind include: What can we do to make performance reviews more productive and less distasteful? Should their objectives be scaled back to just one or two? Should they be disengaged from the determination of compensation and, if so, how? As managers, should we invest time to keep a day-to-day scorecard on individual qualitative and quantitative performance and feed back impressions to employees on an ongoing basis? Should periodic performance reviews be relatively incidental as opposed to regular coaching "in the moment"? (After all, aren't we all teachers?) Should less emphasis be placed on looking backward and more on how to improve future performance? Should the process be renamed and redesigned as a "personal development review"? Should we put aside "forced ratings"? Just where does the process fit in building organizational performance? What do you think?
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