I loathe performance reviews. Not because Im a fragile millennial who cant handle criticism (though, who actually enjoys criticism?), but because the idea of boiling a year of work and life and office machinations down to numbers on a screen seems reductive.
Ive never had a particularly bad performance review. Cant say Ive ever had a good one either.
Im not alone. Just two in 10 employees think their company reviews and manages performance in a way that motivates them to do their best work, according to analytics and consulting firm Gallup. That means its not just me and seven out of 10 other employees simply complaining about a tried and true-ish corporate practice that isnt going anywhere.
Most leaders dont find the process very useful either. A McKinsey analysis found that a large share of bosses say their companys performance review system has no effector even a negative oneon overall company performance. Whats more, because cash rules everything, they dont see positive returns on the investment for the time spent on performance management.
This isnt new. The necessity of performance reviews has long been debated. But as we forcibly exit the pandemic, with failed attempts to return to the office and turn the workplace back to normal, performance reviews this year are likely to carry significantly more weight.
The workplace stress, worries over burnout and wellbeing, and pushes for more work-life balance in movements like quiet quitting that have all been amplified in the past two-plus years are going to make performance reviews more stressful for managers and their employees, says Michael Schrage, a research fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Managements initiative on the digital economy.
As Schrage says, Performance reviews are being asked to do much more nowadays.
We need to re-define performance
Theres so much that could go wrong as bosses approach the end of year review season with twinkles of a return to office in their eyes and the potential for layoffs looming in the distance.
What leaders should be asking in terms of performance reviews, Schrage says, is: What do we mean by performance? Is an employees performance measured in key strokes? Time on the clock, or in the office? Is it measured in the number of people who read an article? The ideas, or vision they bring to a team?
We have to know what were measuring, what it tells us about the value of employees, and then understand how that fits into the overall mission and operation of a company.
Steve Hatfield, Future of Work global leader at Deloitte, says its time for companies to stop thinking about performance management in a second industrial revolution style obsession with input-output results.
The current systems lack the trust that so many workers came out of the pandemic demanding from their employers. Performance reviews have for so long solely focused on what the employee hasnt done well, or what they can and should do better to boost production.
Instead, Hatfield says, companies need to focus that energy toward figuring out what support and systems managers and their teams need to operate at a high level and thus do their best work. Simply focusing on input-output misses so many nuances that might be at play when it comes to the quality and productivity of a single employee or a team.
Not looking beyond the output aspect of performance means youre missing how your employees work as humans, Hatfield says.
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