Manage My Employees

Short article #35

Many managers I’ve interviewed loathe giving performance reviews. But that can’t possibly compare to a likely overwhelming majority of employees, who think the whole appraisal process is pretty much flawed in their organization.

There are a number of signs I’ve identified from client engagements over the last twenty years which point to performance reviews that fall way short of being the management tool they could be.

Here are 5 of the most common signs:

• Managers avoid doing performance reviews, so they’re often late.
• Managers invest too little time preparing, instead they try to get them over with as fast as possible. To expedite, managers use past performance reviews to copy/paste “wording” — and to make fast modifications to scores/ratings instead of stopping to carefully consider each criteria.

• Employees passionately complain that the reviews are unfair… provide to little specificity… aren’t backed up with concrete, unambiguous examples which justify the unusually low—or high marks.
• The reviews aren’t utilized as a learning and development tool.
• Managers treat them as a monologue not a dialogue, giving the employee little reason to be open-minded and to offer his/her candid feedback.

For employees to constructively ‘apply’ a performance review into the context of their job, as well as to take substantive action on ways they can improve their contribution to the organization, requires a review process approach involving three factors:

• An overall strategy in managing employee performance in the company, including career planning.
• Openness and two-way communications during reviews.
• High trust between employees and management.

Performance reviews can be tools for organizational and employee change or development. For more on giving effective performance reviews see Secrets to Giving Employee Performance Reviews.

Mark Holmes helps companies increase sales, service and employee performance. He utilizes twenty-four years of experience advising, training, and coaching some of America’s most successful small and large companies. His ideas on employee retention, employee motivation, customer service and leadership have been widely featured in major national media.