Owner, Larry Courtney Consulting
Management Consulting and Business Brokerage for Professional Services Firms and other Businesses
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larrycourtney
The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about performance reviews by Samuel A. Culbert. The article was adapted from “Get Rid of the Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing — and Focus on What Really Matters.”* Essentially the article makes the point that formal performance reviews, based on a recurring periodic calendar date, do not work, they are disliked by employees, and could even be detrimental from a legal perspective, especially when managers tend to provide inflated ratings. Instead the article maintains, managers should be providing nearly daily feedback to employees on their performance.
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Daily feedback should be in the toolbox of every manager. If used on a regular basis, comments shared during an eval would not come as a surprise to employees. One of the downfalls I see over and over with evals is the lack of preparedness on both parties part, as well as the lack of training ERs give to managers to assist in preparing and giving effective feedback. Senior leadership, including HR should continue to have periodic training with management on giving effective feedback. Seeing vague comments such as “Sally is very nice.” on evals reminds me of the kid cramming lots of conjunctions into his college paper just to hit the 500 word requirement. Specific accomplishments on a project, specific improvements that need made on a skill set, or quotes from particular clients on customer service, help an EE (and manager) focus on the details at hand. These types of tangibles can lead to real growth and real affirmation for an EE.
Larry I totally agree that daily feedback is a must, however there is an art to delivering negative feedback in a positive way so as to not totally demotivate an employee and those that are good at this will be extremely successful!
Matt Barcus here – speaking for myself, and not necessarily Carol – Larry, I would agree that a minimum of weekly feedback is a must, with regular progress reports and feedback on large projects that progress through the project life-cycle. I see the need for a formal performance review, but that review should just be a quick compilation of the feedback that is given on an ongoing basis and should be no surprise to anyone. If a manager fails to to recognize the day-to-day or week-to-week successes and failures of his people only to provide feedback one time per year, then he is not a good manager of people.
I agree with Mr. Courtney’s contention that performance management (not review) should be an ongoing process, not a one time yearly event. Realistically, name a manager that practices constant feedback and coaching (and that is not someone from the NFL). We don’t have an issue with a process; we really have an issue with management! Appropriate management means checking in with your direct reports, telling them when they do a good job and coaching them through the developmental areas and, yes, even disciplining them when necessary. The performance evaluation process is a necessary evil – forcing reluctant managers to MANAGE. It’s an evolutionary process, and I fear we are not yet ready to eliminate the annual review.
Great article Larry. I totally agree that annual reviews area a terrible replacement for proper, effective, ongoing feedback.
We may not be able to get rid of them all together, it still benefits the organisation to have a formal process for recording performance. The process is also a good chance to look ahead and make development plans. The annual review should be just a summary of feedback already given though.
At a mine I worked at we brought in performance reviews at the operator level, and the rule was the supervisors couldn’t bring up any “negative” feedback which they hadn’t already raised with the person being reviewed. Gathering feedback before brining in the program had identified that the biggest issue people had had with previous review programs they’d been involved with was supervisors storing up negative feedback until the performance review. Logically this then led to every employee dreading the annual review.
Unfortunately I too have had the experience you mentioned of clearly underperforming individuals being giving average or above ratings in performance reviews, and then being quite surprised to be given negative feedback from a new leader.
Thanks again, really enjoyed the article. Here’s to the end of annual reviews!!
– Jamie