Are Employee Performance Reviews ‘Outdated’?

#MyThought&Experience

Time of year-end and organization are on a spree of employee performance reviews and feedbacks, which eventually leads to increments, for which all employees are waiting throughout the year. Being an HRBP of Automobile Company, I’m currently responsible to close whole performance evaluation & increment cycle of Business Unit. Going ahead with starting PMS process we conduct PMS refresher training focusing on “How to Give Effective Feedback?” for all Managers aiding them to offer fair & unbiased feedback. You might think for a while how cool? But trust me 90% managers don’t even care about this training. Stay tuned story lies ahead.

As you all aware of the current economic downtrend of the automobile sector my challenge of conducting an effective PMS cycle becomes a tough challenging task because of employee buzz “Iss saal kitna doge?” “Increment hai kya is baar?” to answer this question literally I don’t have any answer, however, we convinced individuals by saying that performance reviews are not don’t only for giving increment but to give constructive feedback for individual development and appreciate employees for their major achievements done in the year.

Now while sitting & spending my precious time in performance review discussions dialogue, I noted below mentioned major facts which will state you why current performance reviews are outdated;

• Why do companies have annual performance reviews in the first place? They are traditional top-down organizations where we had to "weed out" the bottom performers every year. By forcing managers to rate people once per year we can have annual talent reviews and decide who gets more money, whom to promote, and whom to let go.
• The next most debatable topic i.e “Bell Curves” is a traditional approach based on the philosophy "we can’t totally trust managers" so we're going to force them to fit people into these rating scales. And in many companies (around 20%) there are forced distributions, which mandate that some percent of employees are rated at the bottom and only a limited percent can be rated at the top.
• We do have a lot of high performers, but forced ranking eliminates great people and damages the culture.
• Managers come in a review dialogue meeting with loaded gun to shoot appraisee for all his good deeds and eventually appraisee had to surrender.
• Managers cannot typically "judge" an entire year of work from an individual at one time (imagine if your spouse gave you an annual review!), so the annual review is awkward and uncomfortable for both manager and employee.
• Myth: Because it’s “Performance Review” Not a “Career Review”
• The most valuable part of an appraisal is the "development planning" conversation - what can one do to improve performance and engagement - and this is often left to a small box on the review form

Looking for brighter side below mentioned key initiatives will lead us from Performance Review to Career Review;

• We can give regular feedback i.e develop feedback-rich culture (daily, weekly) because regular coaching done by Manager is the key to alignment and performance.
• Some employees are a poor fit and likely are poor performers, these issues should be addressed immediately, not at the end of the year.
• Talk about performance regularly and let employees create their own goals on a regular basis. So that employees can know their own strengths and weakness.
• Important to have honest conversation dialogues.
• Avoiding hypocrisy – many managers do this for their benefits.
• We can Set and Reset goals frequently.
• Appreciate for all achievements of employees and guide them for weak areas.

On a closing note, for conducting the performance review process good, effective and enjoyable process we all are responsible. Because We all owe it !!