Linda Bonanno's Weblog

Recently there was an article on Wall Street Journal online in which the author blasts the yearly performance review as a completely useless exercise.  Get Rid of the Performance Review! I apologize if this link is for subscribers only.

I have to admit there are a few points in this article that I find compelling. Yes, if you’ve got a bad corporate culture reviews can kill morale and teamwork. Yes, reviews are subjective and can change dramatically depending on your manager. Yes employees think that their raises are tied to their reviews. (although this is rarely true in practice!)

However, I vehemently disagree that performance reviews should be killed altogether.  I see the review as a way to capture the essence of all of the good things that happened over the year. I don’t care who you are or what you do, there are things that you did well in your job and your manager should recognize them. I am tickled pink every time one of my employees reads their review and finds something positive in there and tells me “I didn’t think that you even knew about/remembered that – I forgot about it myself”.

I also believe that the review is meant to provide constructive feedback. This is not sharp criticism, but examples of things that could be improved and the encouragement to change.

Maybe I am fortunate. I have only had two instances in my management career where reviews that I have given have greatly upset the receiver. In both cases the reviews were a surprise. One, because I inherited the person shortly before the review period and I gave the review based on the previous manager’s feedback and 360 peer feedback. The other because I failed as a manager and didn’t give any negative feedback prior to the review. Both were unfortunate.  I learned a lot from this.

Reviews should never be a surprise.

This sounds stupidly obvious, but it is not to a lot of managers. If you aren’t communicating and connecting with your employees throughout the year you are bound to surprise them. Rarely is the surprise a “good” one. If you hide from delivering feedback your employee will NOT know that there is a problem. You need to make sure that everyone gets that chance to modify their behavior. This needs to be done as soon as possible. Don’t wait – the feedback should be fresh – within a day or so (sometimes you need to give yourself time to cool off to be constructive). The feedback also should be specific – this is not the time to be vague. Even waiting a week is too long, you will lose that specificity. Putting the feedback down on paper after months have passed is terrible. This makes the infraction is a concrete permanent failing. Working through issues on a day to day basis is a lot more forgiving. The best constructive feedback in a written review is one that details an issue, talks about what already has been done to address it, and suggests additional actions to take.