News »Browse Articles » Why Performance Reviews Don`t Work - And What You Can Do About It

Kelly Spors

When it comes to evaluating employee performance, many small companies still use your standard annual performance review where managers provide detailed written feedback to their direct reports once a year. But there’s growing skepticism that these yearly appraisals are valuable.

Performance_ReviewsIn fact, they may cause more harm than good.

Such reviews hurt morale and lead to mistrust and communication lapses among managers and their subordinates, according to Samuel A. Culbert in an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Employees don’t want to confide in their bosses about their professional needs or even personal strifes because they fear it will come back to haunt them in the annual review.

“The alleged primary purpose of performance reviews is to enlighten subordinates about what they should be doing better or differently,” Mr. Culbert writes. “But I see the primary purpose quite differently. I see it as intimidation aimed at preserving the boss’s authority and power advantage.”

Small businesses in particular have the flexibility to be more creative and strategic with their employee review process. Many of our recently named Top Small Workplaces employ alternative approaches to performance reviews. Integrated Project Management, a Burr Ridge, Ill., project-management firm, has managers meet one-on-one with their direct reports on a weekly basis and sets rules to prevent the performance reviews from turning up unwelcome surprises. No complaint or criticism can show up in an annual performance review that wasn’t mentioned to the employee at least once before. The company evaluates employees not just on how well they perform their jobs, but also how well they adhere to company values, like honesty and integrity. It uses employee reviews as a chance to offer training and development opportunities to employees who want to develop their careers within the company.

Other small companies use “360-degree” reviews, where managers and employees get reviews from many people both above them and below them and their peers. The point: You’re not just relying on one superior’s assessment of you, which is part of what makes so many employees so distrustful of the traditional review process. Mr. Culbert advocates replacing performance reviews with what he calls “performance previews,” where managers and their reports are mutually accountable to helping them better work together in the future.

Source:
http://www.hrguru.com/news_feeds/visit?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.wsj.com%2Findepend

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