Managing Project Team
Why Performance Reviews Are Hated By Everyone?
WSJ has published a great article on how performance reviews are hated by everyone in corporations. It raises a good topic, but in my opinion it fails to answer why performance reviews are hated. It focuses only on how manager communicates with her or his reports. Perhaps it may make performance reviews better, but it does not the fix the real problem. I believe communication is not the key reason for many corporate employers hate performance reviews. In my opinion, the true reason is that many managers when they go over a performance review with an employee, they loose connection between performance and review’s result. Primarily because managers forget about employee’s performance because reviews are done once or twice a year.
Employees need evaluations they can believe and based on achievements they still remember. This is why evaluations have to happen often like every month or every quarter. The goal is to evaluate something that everyone still remembers. And good work, smart work has to be reward right away. Everyone has to clearly understand the connection between working harder, doing it smarter, producing more and the next paycheck or amount of the bonus.
Only if performance reviews build a strong connection between how smart an employee worked and the reward she receives when both parties remember that work clearly, only then performance reviews are useful.
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