Face it. Performance management and employee reviews are the bane of existence for most managers—and the employees they manage! It’s unfortunate that a practice that should be designed to improve employee performance and contribution to the company, while developing career-related skills that are personally important, often becomes a dreaded—and, sometimes, contentious—once-a-year interaction. It doesn’t have to be that way; here are some new ways that HR is approaching the performance management process.
From Episodic to Ongoing
The idea of having a formal meeting, once a year, between an employee and his or her manager to get useful feedback to drive effectiveness and performance improvement is clearly flawed. In an era where jobs were narrowly defined, goals were clear, and the internal and external environment was very stable, that approach may have worked to a certain degree. It really doesn’t work today, though.
More companies are moving to more frequent ways for employees and managers to have conversations related to performance.
Adobe has gone from an annual performance review process to a Check-in approach that requires managers to meet with employees regularly to provide feedback. The result, according to Adobe, more engaged and empowered employees.
A Focus on Measurable Outcomes
What does a “3” really mean on a scale of “1-5”? That question has been the source of much conflict and consternation for both employees and managers as they attempted to navigate the often qualitative application of quantitative metrics to employee performance.
Google has been at the forefront of taking a more metric-driven approach, guided by KPCB’s John Doerr who encouraged Google to adopt Intel’s approach to using objectives and key results (OKRs) in performance evaluation, as outlined in a Fast Company article.
A key point made in a Harvard Business Review article, “The Performance Management Revolution,” by Peter Cappelli and Anna Tavis, is this: the biggest drawback to annual reviews is their focus on past, rather than future, behavior. “With their heavy emphasis on financial rewards and punishments and their end-of-year structure, they hold people accountable for past behavior at the expense of improving current performance and grooming talent for the future,” say the authors.
It’s a good point. Whichever model of, or approach to, performance management you take, a focus on how the process will serve to positively impact performance, productivity and profits should guide your decisions.