By Bob Rogers
If you’ve read the business news in the last few days, it’s likely you’ve seen something about UCLA professor of management Samuel Culbert’s book "Get Rid of the Performance Review!” The Wall Street Journal even published a piece by Culbert titled “Yes, Everyone Really Does Hate Performance Reviews”.
The truth is that everyone doesn’t hate performance reviews. It’s all about how managers and employees handle the review—never the tool. In my 32 years in business, I believe about 20% of companies get performance management right. In the other 80% of companies, everyone hates performance reviews because of the poor implementation and skills of leaders. But the 20% that get it right all consistently follow the same steps that eliminate most complaints identified in Culbert’s article. Not surprisingly, they are almost always the best performing companies.
In my book, Realizing the Promise of Performance Management, I outline the steps that make performance management an effective process. Once adopted by leaders and employees they give companies a huge advantage in performance, morale, retention, engagement—all the things that can make any company an employer of choice.
The best performance management approach includes:
- Linking individual performance metrics to the business priorities of the company
- Training managers in how to coach and provide feedback fairly and with impact
- Giving the employee more ownership of their performance plan
- Changing the mindset of the leader from evaluator to coach
- Focusing on both the whats (accountabilities) and the hows (competencies)
- Making the discussions and reviews more developmental and forward looking
Another way to avoid pain around performance management and reviews is to have the manager and employee create the plan jointly and have mid-year and end-of-year reviews. Employees will feel ownership of the plan and great satisfaction in meeting their goals, particularly if they can see a clear line of sight to their contribution to the success of the business.
Do companies need a performance management system? You bet they do, but for the right reasons—clear expectations, alignment of work to company objectives, developing communication and trust between leaders and employees and higher employee engagement.
If you still aren’t convinced, how about these two examples—Texas Children’s Hospital System was voted Best Place to Work in Houston and DDI was voted Best Place to Work in Pittsburgh. Both companies have very effective performance management systems and I think these awards speak volumes about how the employees feel about their organizations. What do you think?
Bob Rogers is the President of Development Dimensions International (DDI)
The concept of performance appraisal is rooted in scientific management principals (FW Taylor). This is at the heart of much of the ills within organisations in the Western world right now.
For an alternative view, I would recommend "Abolishing Performance Appraisals - Why they backfire and what to do instead" Coens and Jenkins ISBN 1-57675-076-0
Posted by: Glyn Lumley | 04/29/2010 at 11:58 AM