Earlier this month, a man who was reportedly upset about a bad performance evaluation shot and killed a manager and himself.

Clearly this worker had some serious issues beyond his review, but maybe the event should be a wake up call. When kids shoot up schools, experts come out of the woodwork calling for bans on video games.

I know, most people won’t pull a gun on their boss because of work evaluations but they do cause a lot of distress.

That’s why I’m calling for a worldwide ban on these stupid, ineffective management tools that have been around since the 1960s.

So you don’t think I’ve gone batty, my partner in this shout out for a review rethink is someone with more credibility than me, a UCLA professor and management guru Samuel Culbert.

Culbert is on a mission to eradicate reviews and he’s even got a book coming out on the issue in April titled: “Get Rid of the Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing — and Focus on What Really Matter.”

“They are not accurate, not objective, and the metrics applied to people have no meaning,” he said. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of his disdain for these things. “They are the worst vestige of modern management.”

According to his research most companies follow this rating formula no matter how their workers rate:

* 70 percent of people are rated average in a review.
* 20 percent are rated excellent.
* and 10 percent need improvement or need to be replaced.

Reviews, he said, force managers to find something wrong with the bulk of the workforce in order to fit pre-designated budgets. So even if you’re doing your work well your boss may have to rate you average because she or he doesn’t have the money to give you a 3 percent raise.

Culbert also questions whether anyone has the expertise to rate another individual; and often times a managers personal feelings about a worker can come into play.

“If it were God giving me a review that would be fair. But anyone short of God, I don’t think so,” he quipped.

Getting feedback is important, he stressed, but not in a once-a-year written performance review. Managers and workers have to talk face-to-face on a regular basis and resolve issues as they come up. “Being able to have real dialogue can create good relationships in the workplace,” he explained. “Let’s talk about the issues in light of getting the job done, modifying the behavior so the company gets what it needs from us.”

Culbert sees these reviews as a power play for HR departments. “They become the keepers of all the naughtiness that goes on because they have access to all the performance reviews and they are able to voice their opinions in situations where they shouldn’t be, such as who deserves a promotions and who needs what kind of training.” And the big one, who will get more money. “HR makes something that is a sham into a routine and something that has to be done.”

I guess we’ve got to get HR folks on the kill-the-performance-review bandwagon if this mission is going to succeed. You could buy Culbert’s book and anonymously drop it in interoffice mail to HR.

For those of you who probably won’t do this, and have resigned yourselves to the fact that performance evaluations will be around until the end of your working life, please, please, please don’t take them personally.

Why?

“It’s all bologna,” stressed Culbert.