Yearly Reviews: Good Tool or Wasted Activity
Well... now that I'm an employee in a 300+ person organization, it's Yearly Review time. I had avoided it for about 8 years as a consultant, but there's no avoiding it in large-ish organizations these days. It seems that everyone is interested in getting feedback from the employee on their year, giving them feedback on the reality of their year, and then having them provide feedback on others around them. It's a process that's pretty standard with a few local modifications in most places I've heard about.
My question is this: Is it really a useful exercise, or is it just something to fill HR folders? I'm not convinced it's a clear-cut answer.
Certainly, the biggest advantage of these types of reviews is to cull out the under-performers. In this litigious society, every CEO and HR manager is trying to avoid a civil suit on some wrongful termination. So rather than worry about those lawsuits, they have these reviews. These form the basis of a written, regular, feedback of the employee's lack of acceptable performance. Then, when they choose to fire the person, they have all the written records to point to so as to avoid the lawsuit.
But is that really necessary?
The Overly Cautious Types
Certainly, it's one way of protecting yourself against lawsuits. But so would formal letters of poor performance. In fact, that's how they did it 30 yrs ago. You were told you're not "meeting your numbers" a couple of times by your boss. Then you got a letter, and then you got fired. It's pretty simple, and it's pretty direct. There's a cause, and an effect. There's no reason to wait 3, 6, or 9 months for the annual review process - you let them know when it's appropriate. Period.
Even in this day and age, I've been taken aside and told "Hey, lighten up" from time to time on a particularly tough day when I've been grumbling a bit. I can accept the reprimand, life is like that. If you're working your hardest, I for one, am not surprised that you ruffle a few feathers. So, in general, I'm a big fan of the "as needed, when needed" approach to both negative and positive feedback.
You can't train a dog not to poo in the house by yearly reviews. Address the issues when they occur with the proper level of documentation, if necessary.
But for those overly cautious types... those worried about civil suits... I can see some value in the ability to document people that should be fired. But the downsides of the review process to nearly everyone else is staggering.
The Standard Employee Review
Each review process has several categories. I've seen as few as 5 and as many as 20. They are all just varying degrees of job component classifications. In that, they are all the same. So let's look at the typical employee first. They are a middle-of-the-road employee. They get their work done acceptably, nothing amazing, but nothing bad. They blend into the woodwork, as it were, and do their jobs.
This person may think of themselves as a A-quality person in some regard. Maybe they are right, maybe not. But what's the real value of telling them that they are a C-quality person? Does it make them work harder? Not really. They are a grown-up. They have made their decisions. Maybe it's their home life, maybe it's the time they need to spend in their bowling league, but for whatever reason, they are giving the employer all they are going to give.
So who gains by telling this person they aren't as good as they'd like to think? No one. The reality is not going to motivate this person - in fact quite the opposite. This is going to demotivate this person. It might even make them feel a little hostile towards the manager or employer. Why? Because as much as this person may be kidding themselves, they wanted to believe that their efforts - and everyone makes efforts from time to time, is seen and appreciated. This "honest" feedback may be honest, but it's not going to help.
The alternative is true as well. A person that seems them as a C-quality person is not going to believe they are an A-quality person. They have a bad self-image, and no amount of management praise is going to change their self-assessment.
In either case, this isn't really helpful feedback. It may be necessary for a lot of reasons:
- setting yearly bonus expectations
- preparation of "cutback" lists in times of trouble
- assessment of people to be moved to less important projects
useful reasons, all - but not really helpful to the employee. Face it, all these can be accomplished with a talk from the manager or again the old style letter.
The Flawed Star
Let's look at the case of a person that is exceptional in nearly everything but one activity. Maybe they don't communicate well. Maybe they don't interact with customers in the best way. Maybe they don't understand the business as well as others. But in all other regards, this person is a star. What about them?
This person has decided that one part of their profile is just not as strong as the others, and like many human beings, chooses to do something they enjoy rather than work on something they do not. So they pour more energy into the things they are good at, and leave the things they are poor at to suffer. What does the review process do for them?
Maybe it is news to them, but most likely, they know exactly what the truth of their skill-set is. They don't need to be told. It's almost annoying that their faults are brought up again at this time, when it's clear that in every other regard they are such an incredible asset to the team. They aren't going to get cut. But every year they are going to be told how great they are except...
If it's not news to them, then they fall into the last category.
The Self-Aware Employee
In this case, the person knows how they are seen, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and has come to terms with them. They aren't going to be changing because someone fills out a form. They have decided exactly how hard they are going to work. They are either going to surf the web - or not, but no amount of reviewing is going to change their mind. This is who they are. Period.
To many, this person is annoying. In the extreme. They seem not to care that they can be better - no matter how trivial the work may seem to be to improve. They play to their strengths, and accept their limitations. Because of this, most of the time, they are very successful. When they aren't, they don't loose sleep over it. It just is.
For this person, the process is a joke. It's someone else's idea of a way to cover their behinds in case of the civil suit for wrongful termination. In the end, this person drifts through the process, accurately representing themselves, and the opinions of others, which possibly interesting, are not sufficient to sway this person from their course in life. It is, after all, their life, and they have purposefully chosen this path.
Verdict
So I look at all this and think in the end, it's a waste of time. Talk to, warn, and fire those that need firing. For the rest, tell them when they do something good, and talk to them when they do something you wish they hadn't.
Anyone that has kids knows this. If you want good kids, talk to them. Don't make it a yearly process. It just doesn't work that way.