First Comment

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it's that time of year again. It's time to give and receive performance reviews. But while most people dread that time--and since it's usually tied to bonuses and raises, that's totally understandable--it should be a time where an employee can reflect on their progress from the previous year and managers and Human Resources can access an employee's year-to-year performance AND development.

The development aspect of it can be the most important part of the process. It is important to look at what happened in the past year but other than compensation or layoff purposes, it's all information of what's already happened. What can be just as important--or more important in many cases--are the development growth planned to build on the the current year's performances for next year and beyond. Since the goal is to retain most of your employees and make sure they perform to the highest capabilities, the development plan for the future--and employees goals being aligned with that plan--is vital to make sure that you meeting your overall corporate goals.

And that's why goal planning should always be tied into the performance review. That isn't to say that there needs to be punishment for not meeting goals or great rewards for exceeding them, but it is important to make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction. That way, when the actual performance review takes place, the employees next-year development plan can be ironed out more easily. Employees would go from fearing reprimand to wondering what they needed to incorporate into their own planning for the next year. In the end, if their goals are tied to the company's goals, then they can actually feel like they're making a difference--which makes performance reviews just a little more palatable.

I wrote earlier this week about changing the performance review scale, but the Wall Street Journal via Yahoo! Finance has an even better idea: eliminate performance reviews completely (H/T Sarah). The article's opening is a great call to arms:

It's time to finally put the performance review out of its misery.

This corporate sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities. Everybody does it, and almost everyone who's evaluated hates it. It's a pretentious, bogus practice that produces absolutely nothing that any thinking executive should call a corporate plus.

And yet few people do anything to kill it. Well, it's time they did.

Just because everyone hates it, though, doesn't mean it should go. The ability to evaluate employees keeps everyone honest--including the reviewer, the reviewed, Human Resources, and upper management. Everyone hates it because it isn't fun to judge other people but like Valentine's Day reminds us once a year to say "I love you" when we should be doing it every day, performance reviews reminds us once a year that we should be giving constructive criticism, even though we should be doing that all the time as well. The key is to do it in a way that achieves a maximum comfort level for everyone involved and gets to a positive result.

Since we all need a little laugh for our Monday, The Onion takes on job performance reviews, goal setting, inspirational posters, company retreats and many more subjects. With end-of-the-year performance reviews just completed, this may hit too close to home for some, but at least you can get a laugh out of it. Enjoy (a NSFW word slips out right after the 2 minute mark so if you're watching this at work, you may want to stop it at 2 minutes):


Obama To Hold Job Performance Review With Every American Worker

In my company, we're currently undergoing our annual Personal Development Review process. Within this process, we review our accomplishments from the past year, receive praise and criticism from our managers, and have a chance to respond to the manager comments. As we go through this process, it reminds me of a report that the Onion News Network did on sarcastic praise copied below. Although The Onion report is a joke, sometimes praise given to employees can come off as sarcastic or unconvincing. Make sure you give praise only when deserved. If you feel like you're being sarcastic, maybe the praise is unwarranted.


Report: 70 Percent Of All Praise Sarcastic

First, my apologies for being off line for a while. The fourth quarter shuffle is in full swing here at Astron!

I read an interesting article on jobsinthemoney.com regarding performance reviews. Specifically, making them work for you. You can read the full article here: http://www.jobsinthemoney.com/news.php?articleID=713 The main gist of the story is that employees should consider performance reviews not as events to be dreaded, but rather ways to demonstrate additional value and initiative to employers by actively seeking ways to improve themselves.

With all the gloom and doom on the news, each day more people are thankful to have a job. Undoubtedly, though, these same people are worried that they might have to face the reality of a layoff in the coming months. One of the best ways to avoid being in that painful situation is to demonstrate with concrete deliverables and actions how you as an employee showed initiative and rendered yourself invaluable to your employer.

When I was working in industry, I always kept a folder with copies of any e-mails I received saying that I did a great job, demonstrated positive ROI, etc. So if there was ever talk of a layoff or a less than stellar performance review, I was ready to defend my case. Thankfully, I never needed to dip into that folder. This technique, however, is one you might consider doing to help ensure your job security in this rocky economic climate.