Death to Performance Reviews?

Shawnee Love   •  
June 22, 2016

Sometimes I loathe the internet.  It is at its most loathsome on 2 occasions:  day and night.

Kidding.  

Actually, outside of the plethora of haters, shamers and blamers on the web which I also loathe, the times I hate the internet the most are:

  • When trying to discern real credentials from “if I say it enough online, people will believe me” and
  • When observing click whores who will say just about anything to get eyeballs on pages even if its false, fake, lies, and/or patently ill-informed to the point of being ridiculous.

There ought to be a credibility meter where viewers could vote “true” or “false”.  There also ought to be a blazing banner which identifies whether the post, tweet, blog, white paper, etc. is opinion vs fact.  The writer could choose for themselves (this is an opinion piece by the way), but if a writer was to cite “fact”, that writer should have to prove it.  For the record, having a million views isn’t proof of anything but a million other bored nuts or too much  time on your hands.Display of assorted ice creams

Just because it is on the internet doesn’t mean its true.  That is why trusted advisors are more important now than ever.  And flavour of the minute management is even more destructive today than it was when it was flavour of the month. If you have fallen prey to some harebrained management practice you read on the internet, please comment below.

My fallen moment was being open to the idea that performance reviews are dead.  When that idea first surfaced on the internet, I was excited.   Anyone in HR knows that performance reviews are dreaded by managers, employees and HR alike, and I really wanted there to be a better option.  I read all the material in the hopes of learning how I could be on the cutting edge and discovered the death of performance reviews is a bunch of sensationalist hogwash.

Feedback is more important to employees today then ever before, and we have more means of providing timely specific feedback than at any time in history. The only part of performance reviews that are ‘dead’ are the dry papers which take hours to complete and are never read again.  May they burn.  However, you should never give up the opportunities provided by a performance review (aka conversation) which are to:

  • Connect with your people,
  • Celebrate progress and successes,
  • Re-align activities and resources,
  • Set targets and goals, and
  • Learn how to do better.

Long live the performance conversation I say.  Despite being a decidedly un-sexy opinion which therefore won’t go viral, it is practical and will help you manage effectively.