Tomorrow is Performance Review Day (For Me)

Despite having had to do them in the past when I had a team of my own, I just can't really get very interested in Performance Reviews. That's not to say I didn't put a lot of effort into completing reviews for people on my team (I did); it's just that it seems like such a flawed process. First of all, most companies only do them once a year, which implies that an employee is only getting this sort of feedback on an annual basis. I suppose you could argue that it's a good thing that there's something in place to ensure it happens at all, as it's possible that you might actually get nothing from your manager otherwise! I think some managers use the fact that there is a year-end review as an excuse for not doing much people-stuff during the rest of the year. But that's just poor management style, and the right answer is to change that, not settle for once-a-year feedback.

Another problem I've always had with Performance Reviews, both now and at the bank, is that the format never seems to work very well. I can understand why HR wants a standardized form, but unfortunately I don't always think the categories we're forced to use in evaluating people work all that well. I've never been asked for my input on the categories, and yet year after year I was expected to profile each member of my team using those arbitrary buckets. One of the golden rules of management that I heard a long time ago, and tried to live by, is that employees shouldn't hear anything on an annual Performance Review for the first time. In other words, what you're telling them via the official review document should match what you've been telling them, good and bad, throughout the year. Unfortunately, that can be more difficult when some of the areas you're rating people on aren't actually important to the job they're doing. "Hey Fred, I've been noticing lately that you're struggling with creating and delivering solutions.. let's see what we can do about that, shall we?" Yeah, that terminology just rolls off the tongue!

But my biggest gripe has always been the limitation of tying performance to salary increases. Anyone can see the logic in paying your top performers better, so clearly a really good year by an employee should equal a nice raise. Where it all falls down, though, is that you often can't actually give someone the performance review you want to, because where money's concerned, there are all kinds of checks and balances in place that have to be considered. The example I used to use was this: suppose I had an 8-person team that just finished the most amazing year ever. They took on a ridiculous amount of work because they felt the company's future depended on it, and they found ways to get it all done, with a high degree of quality and sticking close to the customer's requirements. This team knows they just knocked the ball out of the park on consecutive at-bats, and I've been sure to tell them that every chance I get. Then it's time to do the year-end performance reviews, and I'm told that every team has to map somewhat close to a rating breakdown like 65% are 3's, 25% are 4's, and 10% are 5's, where ratings are essentially from 3 (fully competent) to 5 (superstar). Sure, they'll make exceptions to that rule, but what are the chances of me getting 8 people rated as 4's and 5's (the range that's supposed to represent only about a third of a team)? In most companies: You'd be SOL. And so what could've been a great opportunity to reward hard-work and dedication ends up being counter-motivational in the end. In a situation like that, I'd rather give each team member exactly the rating I think they deserve and then have salary be a separate consideration. I think people can understand that salary is budgeted and therefore often capped, but it just seems wrong to deny people ratings the same way. That was always one of the aspects of performance management that I railed against, for naught.

Luckily, this year I'm only a receiver, not a giver, of Performance Reviews. So I can sit back and bitch about the whole process, knowing I don't have to really get that worked up about it this year.