There is no other workplace ritual that inspires dread and disdain like the performance review. For years, I’ve been hearing from employees and managers who just hate the process.
According to a Workforce Management article, most of you don’t even agree with them.
More than half (51 percent) of 631 respondents believe reviews don’t provide accurate appraisals of their work, and nearly one-fourth dread them, according to the 2011 Globoforce Workforce Mood Tracker, a new semiannual online survey conducted by Globoforce, a business software developer with headquarters in Southborough, Massachusetts, and Dublin, Ireland.
I’ve written before about how some management gurus are waging war on the practice, but this morning I got an email from an expert who says employees should welcome reviews.
Brian Poggi, author of “I Am Not Average: How to Succeed in Your Performance Review,” thinks people hate the process because they don’t come prepared to the review table. “Therefore what better way to prove yourself as being ‘not average’ than by coming into the performance review prepared and ready to respond,” he said. “Any employee who does, I guarantee will be a standout.”
But for some anti-review zealots, even preparation will do little to help a flawed process.
Samuel Culbert, a UCLA professor and management guru, is an anti performance review advocate, and he’s even more extreme than me. He thinks no one other than God should give such reviews.
“If it were God giving me a review that would be fair. But anyone short of God, I don’t think so,” he told me.
Culbert is on a mission to eradicate reviews and his book, “Get Rid of the Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing — and Focus on What Really Matter,” is part of the grand plan.
“They are not accurate, not objective, and the metrics applied to people have no meaning,” he maintained. 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 manager’s personal feelings about a worker can come into play.
Oh yeah, I wrote about workplace favoritism in a column last year, so I know he’s onto something.
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.”
He makes some great points, but alas the performance review ain’t going anywhere, as Poggi points out.
“It’s a well known fact that over 90 percent of larger corporations and 75 percent of state employment systems require annual performance appraisals,” he noted.
So, it might be a good idea to prepare my friends.
Poggi offered 7 tips:
· Prepare for the performance review as you would a business meeting
· Schedule the time- don’t wait to be asked
· Prepare fact-based data to support your performance
· Role play in your mind the key points that will arise from the conversation
· Lead the discussion
· Seek consensus
· Ask for what you want and present clear next steps
“We spend way to much time at work to not feel valued and productive,” he explained. “The performance review is the key opportunity for you to communicate your value, and what else you can do for the company.”
Unfortunately, that doesn’t guarantee anyone will come to an agreement regarding your value.
(Career question? If you have a question about your career or your rights in the workplace just email me at CareerDiva@verizon.net. Also, don’t forget to check out my post on whether a power suit gives you power at work. I’m looking for input from readers on how what they were to work impacts their job performance.)
February 27th, 2012 at 11:40 am
It’s not the performance reviews themselves that I hated when I had to give and receive them. It’s great to get and give effective feedback to help employees improve–and to reward them.
But I really struggled with two things. First was the way some supervisors treated the review process–without doing their homework and really preparing to give effective feedback. Second, and much worse, were the “quotas” that most supervisors receive. Who has the right to tell me that I must have several “average” employees and a few that need improvement? When I was a supervisor, I hired great people, motivated them as a leader, and they did great work. My biggest fights were when I wanted to give them all great ratings because they were deserved them!
So while I feel that performance reviews can be very useful and valuable–I really hate the arbitrary system in which they are administered.
February 27th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Those quotas are the one big problem that review critics point to. It does seem so arbitrary.
February 27th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Haven’t had my performance review yet but I believe this year’ll be the one that breaks me. After years of setting goals that were accepted by higher-ups who had no intention of supporting me with them, and years of job-related achievements that didn’t count promotion-wise, my current list (paraphrased) amounts to “Did what I always do. Plan to keep doing it. Nothing more, nothing less.” If my boss takes issue, it just proves what a horrible boss she is. I’ve asked for her support for years, but just get a polite “sorry, sucks to be you,” and she moves on.
February 28th, 2012 at 1:45 am
I totally agree, the problem with traditional performance reviews are
1. ratings - nobody likes to be put in a box, this is simply counterproductive
2. not timely - once a year looking back on the performance… who keeps all their kudos, notes and feedback from 12 months? and even if you do so, what use is feedback some 10 months after the incident?
3. time consumption and emotional draining - how can hours of preparation, filling out long forms and linking pay to the result of one chat once a year not result in agony, headache and pure aversion of the process? Again counterproductive
4. ‘those quotas’ - I am not even going to comment on those… as if any team’s performance distribution could be compared to another…
What is needed is continuous feedback and regular 1 on 1 meetings. After all, we live in a fast paced world and are used to instant feedback, so why not have it at work as well? If you capture all feedback (i.e. about your behaviour) as well as your objective’s progress (your results), then you only need a ‘performance check in’ meeting every quarter or 6 months to establish trends and simply review the past to concentrate on future improvement.
Thankfully there are many new performance management tools, like Small Improvements, that support this kind of a lean approach.
February 28th, 2012 at 11:15 pm
Amen, Linda! Annual (or even twice yearly) performance reviews do NOT take the place of regular 1 on 1 meetings and timely feedback when things actually happen! Thanks for your great addition to the comments. It’s about engaging employees and motivating them constantly.
March 2nd, 2012 at 1:28 pm
Excellent post on quotas, feedback and the charade of an annual review.
I am struggling with how to react if one gets a negative performance review when an incompetent boss uses you as a scapegoat. In my case, the criticisms are very vague and not well-defined.
Should I escalate the matter? Is talking to the HR worth it? Or should I just consider this my bad luck and move to another company?
March 6th, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Great post - it made me recall the best review experience I ever had was one in which I provided input in advance. The final review document was my work, nearly word for word. With a pay increase that exceeded my expectations. I didn’t realize there were so many issues at play here.
March 7th, 2012 at 6:34 pm
I HATE performance reviews. They are NOT used in Japan. See the Deming Total quality Management program. I got royally screwed on one, and the supervisor was a lying prick. He should be crucified for his lies. I would like to see legislation, where all performance reviews were banned.
March 7th, 2012 at 6:47 pm
At one company I had two employees of different genders. The man had been hired at a salary significantly below his performance level and his senior rank, and the woman had been hired more recently as an intern at a salary commensurate with her level. During ratings season, I rated them both as good performers and recommended increases, but recommended that the man’s salary be increased commensurate with his performance and rank. Management then accused me of being prejudiced against the woman and insisted I give her a larger raise, making her salary almost equal to the man’s. I protested, but eventually had to give in due to intense upper management pressure.
At another company I had two employees, both women. The first was hired a month before the other. The first was hired at a senior level, the second was hired at a junior level. During the month that the hiring took place HR raised all offer salaries by 10%. This resulted in the junior employee being paid about 5% more than the senior employee. Although I tried in the review process to get the situation corrected, neither upper management nor HR were willing to fix the problem. Two years went by. Finally the senior level employee found out about the salary discrepancy and was very upset.
March 7th, 2012 at 6:53 pm
I worked at General Electric for 21 years. My last “annual” performance review was 6 years prior to my resignation. The boss who gave me that review had been terminated shortly afterwards; I suspected the review was completed only to remove one excuse for a likely termination. One thing you could say in favor of GE is they didn’t make any pretense of rewarding management for completing reviews which might have to be skewed for policy reasons.
At my next employer, one of my employees thanked me for his first sincere performance review, pointing out that he had more potential than he had demonstrated. The next move? Did you guess it, his next employer paid more attention to that review than ours did.
Two subsequent employers for which I’ve had the good fortune to work do mean much what they say about the review process.
March 7th, 2012 at 6:53 pm
By the way, the woman in the first instance later discovered she was being paid a lot more than her colleagues from the intern program and started asking me questions about why that was because she felt uncomfortable about it. I had to lie to her about it because of the management situation. I had no complaints about her performance, but it created an uncomfortable situation.
March 7th, 2012 at 7:05 pm
A review is probably garbage if the person is worth 10% more than you are paying him/her. I think many managers use reviews to make employees feel guilty so they won’t ask for deserved raises - so the manager won’t have to deal with employee requests he/she feels uncomfortable with.
At one company I knew an employee who found out she was paid much too little for her rank. She discovered it because she found she had access to a salary table. She went to her female manager to discuss the situation on my advice. Unfortunately, her manager felt so uncomfortable having to discuss this with an employee she fired the employee on the spot. The employee ended up suing the company.
March 7th, 2012 at 7:12 pm
That UCLA professor betrayed his biases when he said “Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing.” That’s a pretty lame and distorted view of the world from the ivory tower. Having been a department manager, project manager, and program manager for a large corporation on large government contracts, and having been a university professor for many years, I believe that I have seen this from both sides. The corporate performance review is the most powerful motivator and communication tool in the hands of both the supervisee and the supervisor — it worked really well in my corporate life, but in my academic life I wish my university would take it seriously. Instead, one person “counts beans” (how many papers, how many review panels, how many grants, how many students, …), and nobody ever has a one-on-one conversation with anyone. So, a university professor (at UCLA) without corporate management experience is not an informed individual. Companies are *NOT* intimidating employees if they use performance reviews correctly!!!
March 7th, 2012 at 7:35 pm
I have mixed feelings about this article. I do agree 100% that reviews are biased and do not show an accurate view of your accomplishments. I can also argue quite well and prove that most people who do come prepared to a review are still not recognized for the work they do. Even if a manager wanted to recognize you he/she does not have the budget to compensate you if the review was accurate. They have a limited budget and have to split it among the employees. They have to justify why they cannot give you the money while they give the higher managers and execs all the money.
What valid justification is there for an exact to get a bonus 1 and a half times there salary and you can only get 5 - 15 % bonus, if your lucky enough to work in such a department that gives one. There is no validation for it.
Yet, if we had no reviews. What would we have? A flat increase? All ready over the last few decades employers do not give raises. They give cost of living increases. What good does that do an employee when Homes, taxes and fuel are going up faster then the cost of living and are not reflected in the cost of living statistics? None. But at least it is something and better then a flat increase if you are performing well.
@Artillio, that is common. Until the public realizes that the women get paid on the average higher for less skills then men, it will continue to be this way. I worked for a company where the women were complaining that they were not paid equal to the men in the company. They were at the upper managements ear all the time. People in general believe that and they would get merit raises, and higher review cost of living increases. I worked in the IT department and saw the salaries. They were all paid higher then the men at the same job levels. It is all a matter of perception rather then reality.
I had a similar experience in another company and the same results were there as well. Of course, I could not say anything. One is not at liberty to discuss information such as that. But that will not stop me from voting for a politician that would speak honestly on it nor would it stop me from supporting a manager that worked for real equality in the workforce.
Anti Discrimination laws are now causing reverse discrimination.
So, how is anyone to receive a fair review? Never.
March 7th, 2012 at 7:39 pm
I asked many experts Richard, on what would be the alternative to performance reviews and most say it’s the day to day feedback that makes the employee better. It’s too late, they say, to connect with an employee during the yearly, or even monthly, performance reviews.
March 7th, 2012 at 7:46 pm
The fundamental of performance review resides in American HYPOCRISY, I know, it is a tuff word, but it seems that it better reflects the reality.
In fact, it is a way a manager, controls and eliminates the values on its team.
The people that are not part of pack, do not stuck-up the manager, are thinking outside the box are eliminated using this performance mechanism to hide the real reasons.
One may look at the companies in WDC, and see packs of employees, doing NOTHING on government money, and covering each other - the packing criteria are: ethnicity, regionalism, lack of character (acceptance of humiliation)…and all these made US a great nation on the edge of the progress…(to be understood as slipping from the edge).
We are now, out of crises, or more exactly in deep INFLATION -DOW is 13000, instead 8,000 because gold is 1750 instead 1200…the volume is maintained but the value decreased…US economy worth less in gold now than in 1980s ! Viva US management ! A management where what is said, has NO value, compared to how is said, in pure redneck American, no accent tolerated, it maters by who said and to whom is connected…all this is part of a big corrupted economy - a legit corruption called business as usual or “corporate America”. This was the fundamental value transferred to the states where we exported US Democracy…can change that, can reform the US Project Management system and values - which now is a part of the Machiaveli book - Il Principe - that is why a first software in Project management was entitled “PRINCE”.
If one finds a solution of how to change that, to refurbish the corporate culture, the nepotism and corruption of our society, may save US from following the Western Roman Empire after 450 faith.
Good luck.
March 7th, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Former Manager and Richard:
I have been a manager in both academia and in business. I do not agree that in business reviews are better than in academia. I think they are subjective in both and many managers - especially at lower levels of management - are not able to remain objective when they are reviewing subordinates. That is, I think reviews can be very helpful in very extreme cases, but not as a general tool. I think the main problem is reviews are taken as objective fact in a lot of cases where they should be taken as hearsay.
The examples I posted above were about the incompetence of HR to correct obvious problems, and the inability of managers of both sexes to deal with human relationships well. And they were about the powerlessness of a manager - myself - to correct obvious problems and unfairness with the system even with considerable effort. To correct this kind of problem, HR departments need to release competent managers from needless regulations to allow them to correct problems.
As to women always getting paid more; well, I don’t subscribe to that view. I do believe there is some reverse discrimination going on, but I’m not sure it’s very extensive. In particular, I think women have no monopoly on incompetence in management.
March 7th, 2012 at 8:07 pm
The main outcome of a performace review should be a motivated employee who knows she’s valuable. A motivated employee is much more likely to listen to constructive feedback. A really bad employee should know what the problems are, and be gived a reasonable time to correct the shortcomings.
March 7th, 2012 at 8:07 pm
I wish the reviews were more candid. They are all subjective.
excellent: by our opinion moving on to be CEO,
…..otherwise walks on water, is worth big bucks to the company
exceeds expectations: by our opinion very promotable, worth less bucks to the company
average: by our opinion, not promotable against the promotables but we will not get rid of you.
…..You will max out in your present pay grade. You are necessary to the bottom line.
needs improvement: in our opinion we might get rid of you because we do not need what you have.
…..look for a new job, you are not contributing much to the bottom line (however it is measured).
does not meet expecations: we think you are crap: resign now rather than be fired.
…..you do not contribute to the bottom line and have attracted attention
These opinions will not change until you get new supervision. I mean, if the supervision does not like your work very much or does not think that you will work better in a management position, can you rework your personality to fit their expectations? Probably not unless the management is sociopathic and likes to keep you unhappy by continuing criticism. Then you become an asset.
March 7th, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Joann:
I believe that there are managers who are not hypocrites and can have honest straightforward discussions with employees about their work. I really do believe that I have been that kind of manager.
I also don’t believe it helps to have a bad attitude even if you happen to work for an incompetent manager. If you persist, eventually you will work for someone who appreciates your value.
March 7th, 2012 at 8:16 pm
I’m reminded of a Dilbert cartoon where performance review were performed by fortune cookie.
March 7th, 2012 at 8:57 pm
My solution was simple - start my own engineering consulting firm. Haven’t had a performance review in 25 years. Haven’t missed them either. Bank account is OK, so my clients must appreciate my value.
March 7th, 2012 at 9:01 pm
Good for you Daryl!!
March 7th, 2012 at 9:29 pm
70% of employees getting an “average” review fits with the theory that people do what’s easiest for them. Managers, being people, are subject to this theory.
All the performance reviews I’ve seen require additional work in the form of documentation to find an employee to be above or below average. Since it’s harder to do something rather than just check the “average” box, most employees will be average.
I’m actually a little surprised that managers feel that 30% of employees warrant this much effort.
March 7th, 2012 at 9:51 pm
Luckily, I’m retired now, so none of this applies to me anymore. However, while reading the article I could feel myself tense up from memories of the past.
I worked the last 21 years for a company that actually was awarded the Deming Award years ago. Here’s how performance reviews were done there when I left (2 years ago):
The employee filled out a self-evaluation form and established a set of goals for future performance and training. At the same time, the supervisor fills out a similar form. Both review both forms with the intent of finding common ground on the evaluation. However, what actually happened was that the supervisor was always right. Other, higher up, personnel also had input to your performance review; however, this was after the initial review step and you would not see these comments until the last stage of the review. Therefore, inaccuracies were not challenged or corrected and remained in the review (had this happen more than once). Upon completing the written review, before the employee could see or discuss it, the supervisors and managers met in a conference room, discussed each employee, and force-ranked each employee against the other employees in that group. In this case, it was an engineering group of about 100 people consisting of engineers, designers and drafters. All were ranked against each other regardless of education or experience. This was done to satisfy management directives for the 70/20/10 percenters. Oh, and if you’re in the bottom 10% for whatever reason, no raise, no bonus, and possibly an invite to work elsewhere (one year they tried to cancel vacations for the 10-percenters, but found out that may be illegal). After a few years of this, you’d think there wouldn’t be any more bottom 10%, but management mandated some be placed in that category anyway. You would only get your final review when they had prepared all the information on salary increases, bonuses, promotions, etc.
The comment about managers and workers talking real-time on a frequent basis is good - it’s called coaching. This was talked about as a desired objective at this company; however, due to job/time pressures, it was never implemented.
Yes, we tracked our accomplishments during the year. Also what training we’d attended.
With this method of performance review, going to the final discussion prepared to correct any misconceptions that may be in the review is futile. Been there, done that. You are presented with a done deal, no changes allowed no matter what.
All of this resulted in employee morale so low it was incredible. My decision to retire early was not difficult to make.
March 7th, 2012 at 10:00 pm
I work for a large corporation who is proud of its employee review process. We all have to fill out our self appraisal which is due the first week of January. We don’t see their comments until late February. The appraisals are reviewed by their manager and some of them are reviewed up the line. And oh by the way, the managers get together with HR and do the salary plan before the end of the year. So we get to wandering what is this process used for if the salary plan is done before we submit our input and before they write their review.
March 8th, 2012 at 12:29 am
The 20/70/10 percent evaluations are the infamous “vitality curve” invented by Jack Welch. It’s known by other names such as “rank and yank”. Most companies who adopt it tend to discontinue its use. The criticisms of this type of personnel policy have been stated in this Wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve
March 8th, 2012 at 1:42 am
I was told to complete my own performace review, I knew my manager would knock it down so I filled in each section as excellent with a few exceeds expectations. I added up my score and it came to “average”.
March 8th, 2012 at 2:18 am
My current company has forgone the 1 on 1 yearly performance review, and never even asks for employee comments. I’m the lone Software/Firmware developer/maintainer and my manager has no idea of what it takes to do my job. I’m in Applications (sales) and the Research and Development manager has no problem asking me to do projects for him.
I just completed optimizing some embedded firmware. It was a task the R&D manager didn’t want to take on. In fact, he didn’t understand one of my optimizations, but it was working when I reviewed the code with him.
I worked long hours and weekends, between dealing with customer issues to meeting changing requirements and deadlines, and all I got on my performance review was “Average” and needs to work more productively and efficiently.
This was all done online, and the review form had no way to contest the review! I did address the comment by mentioning that R&D was consistently appreciative of the timely manner that I performed testing for them, even when they needed it done yesterday, and I had no test scripts available for the new product.
I still got a 3% raise. I know I’m not one of his favorites; but no one person in the company can do everything I do for it.
March 8th, 2012 at 2:26 am
I concur with Art. At my employer, the managers meet and discuss everyone. If you upset one of them, they bring it up and that is can be the sole reason for putting you in the bottom 10. After that, the managers write up their reviews to support the decisions made in the meeting. Months later, the managers meet with their employees to inform them of their reviews. Several years ago, that was often the first you heard of any problems…after some griping about that, they now try to call in the people in the bottom category for an unpleasant discussion closer to that initial decision time. Still, little to nothing can be done by the employee to impact the process…it is pretty much cast in concrete after that first all-manager meeting.
March 8th, 2012 at 11:08 am
Performance reviews are just another management fabrication that have become a check box to see if management “has and are using their resources” to maximize benefit to the company. Our performance review has gotten to the point where each SMART goal must fit within 200 characters. I actually made a goal that said I would come up with a way of defining a SMART goal in the 200 character box and it ran out half way through a word and sentence (as I expected). It got through two reviews and two levels of management and nobody said anything, talk about feeling no one was reading your work. Then the review is not tied to raises because the managers are given a fixed percentage (lets say 3%) of the group budget and the raises are fixed before the review process is complete. Now image a mixed group with 8 people with salaries ranging from $50K for starting engineer {grade 14} to $200K for the senior engineer {grade 18}. You can’t give the person with $200K a 3.5% raise without having to reduce the percentage raise to the lower paid individuals. Alternatively, if large raises 4% are given to the lower paid the higher paid get less raise percentage wise. So how is either case fair. At one time all of the same grade levels were compared against each other which was much fairer competition because the average salaries were closer. It took more work for the managers because they had to meet and discuss the merits of each individual to a group of other managers. This meant to fight for an empolyee raise they had to know the individual and their work, it “just became to much” so they went to the simplier system. Finally, upper management should follow their own rules. They don’t appear to follow the 70% average philosophy because they are all excellent based on the sizes of bonuses and the rate of increase in their pay compared to everyone else. What decisions did they make that were so important and critical that justifies their large increases? Most of their decisions did not result in a new product offering or yield improvement which is what the company should be judged on. Those decisions were made based on suggestions by line workers, production engineers, and research and development personnel. Those same people in some cases had to fight management to get them implemented. I am tired of hearing “managing people is harder than managing technology” to justify the higher pay for management. Managing people is only harder when you have pissed them off so much that they have no respect for the company and the people they work for. Most people, if they are treated fairly will respond without a lot of micro-management.
March 8th, 2012 at 11:29 am
Maybe if the folks viewed the business world as a “patient” then we would get fairer annual reviews. For a “patient” in need of being saved is less concerned if the doctor speaks with an accent, is a social butterfly with the bigwigs, dresses for success, has an inside track with the politicians etc. All they care about is staying alive to see another dawn. As a consequence when you look at the medical world the “cream” rises to the top and the BSs fall at the wayside (in the end).
March 8th, 2012 at 2:55 pm
Considering this. The USA is doomed to be a third world country. Rich managers and peons doing their bidding.
March 8th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
There is truth in the saying that the performance appraisal should not be a surprise. Ongoing feedback, regular 1:1s, transparent sharing of any “templates” or criteria with all team members, all help convert annual or semi-annual formal review as a great planning and documentation tool.
Although we all have our own views of performance, eligibility for promotion, etc., I realized the key to apply those in the context of the current company. The frame of reference at my current employer is different than that at my previous employer.
Over the years, I have built my own templates for performance appraisal to augment the employer’s process/procedures. These varied based on the role, the department charter (for example, engineering vs marketing), and the relative value of the various skills. I used my template as a means of tracking an employee’s progress relative to those dimensions. I also used it to optimize around strengths. Only those weaknesses that were critical to the role drew attention while many other weaknesses could be compensated at a team level.
Bottomline, there is always room for a manager’s philosophy to be reflected in these performance appraisals regardless of a company’s process.
March 9th, 2012 at 4:51 am
The real problem is that, with all the HR motivational hype,
the word “average” has come to mean “bad”. The bulk WILL be
average by the definition of the word average. So if people
have a problem being called average, they should revisit their
statistics books. A 20 - 70 -10 split is not wrong, its just that
80% want to be in the 20%, without stopping to identify the
80% of their colleagues who are supposed to be worse than them.
-SR
March 10th, 2012 at 4:14 am
Thank you all for the excellent article and the very valuable comments. In general, performance reviews are important for both the company and the employee. In my company (with operations all over the world) and probably in most companies, the system is designed by experts and with outside consultants and it is mostly excellent, but only in theory. On the other hand, applying the evaluation process is mostly disastrous leading to unhappy, unsatisfied and disappointed employees with additional conflicts with supervisors and colleagues. In our company, the process is automated with three meetings during the year and system-enforced compliance for both employee and supervisor. Yet, all activities became merely to meet the requirements of the system. The actual performance categories are made, similar to other companies, by managers meeting and distributing those categories to a list of all employees with discussions that are far from reflecting honest evaluation of those employees’ performance throughout the year. In summary, performance reviews are important, the process is excellent in theory, yet it is disastrous when applied almost always.
March 11th, 2012 at 4:57 pm
This article and excellent comments have helped me by letting me know that I’m not alone. I have always fallen into the 70% until this year. All of my past 13 reviews told me that I was a good employee. Last year, I had major personal crises and health issues that caused me to miss too many days. Though covered by short term disability, it caused me to fall out of favor with my manager. I always told my supervisor what was happening, and he always assured me that things were ok at work. Now, I owned my faults and realized I had to improve my productivity back to previous levels. My bosses seemed to be supportive and did not act upset during the bad period, but 6 months later, during my annual review, I was told of complaints from the customer about my work being done on time, etc. Confused, surprised, somewhat hurt, I went and asked those customers (engineering program managers) for honest feedback. They were as surprised as I. One even wrote an email to my manager expressing support, saying I was a “pleasure to work with.” His and others’ support made no difference. I confronted the bosses with evidence that their comments, upon which my assessment score was based, were simply untrue. They refused to change them but condescendingly told me I was welcome to add my own comments to the record.
The rating process was used to bludgeon me, not to try to improve my performance from their point of view. If they had wanted me to improve, why on earth keep it secret for half the year in question? It seems they aren’t interested in me as an individual, even after working with these fine people for many years. It has only damaged my morale, and made me very un-trusting of management. I have worked with much better managers, in my early years as an engineer. Their policy was truly open-door and they didn’t do this, at best, pointless corporate exercise of literally reducing you to a number. They knew your work and they knew you were someone who was capable and willing to get the job done. But things (managers) have changed.
I think that if this type of “tool” is going to be forced on employees, they should have the right to have their input considered and valued. Maybe my boss’s boss should have to weight more than one person’s opinions before making a final judgement on my livelihood. How good am I likely to be now, when my word isn’t even valued, much less my work. I believe I am more, and should be such, than just a “head” on someone’s spreadsheet.
March 13th, 2012 at 3:02 am
Review time is the manager’s perfect payback opportunity if she perceives you as a threat. She can concoct various half-truths, exaggerations, and murkiness to push you to the bottom 10% and out of an earned raise or bonus for a year’s worth of (by all other peer reviews) hard work. Little wonder there are so many brown-nosers in the corporate hierarchy. Review season is their to shine.
March 13th, 2012 at 5:41 am
I have worked for Intel about 3 years, around 10 years ago. I have been the victim of Intel’s performance review system, called “focal”. The review occurs 2 times a year, but the one at the end of the year is the critical one. It controls raises in your salary and options grant.
Intel’s focal calls for department managers (~100 employees) to arrange their employees in a sequence, from the best to the worst. They do that consulting the gls and pls that are reporting to them. As stated here, the top n% are considered “excellent” and receive larger salary increases and more options. Most people are “successful” and m% are “unsuccessful”. If that is not enough, they also have another parameter, “slow”, “fast” or “average” (not sure the exact terms here) that specify how was the employee’s progress during the year compared to his colleagues.
I have received a bad review after my first year. I wasn’t anticipating it. I was rated “slow”. I couldn’t understand it. I have received cheers from other groups with which I interacted, including a bonus from them. I performed all my duties, and still I received the bad review.
I tried to appeal the result of the review and wrote a big letter, which HR took and probably buried. It made no affect.
This followed me when I transferred to another team in the department. Again, a bad review (”slow”). It didn’t matter that I did my assignments, didn’t cause problems and was helpful to my colleagues. It took them a couple of years more and I was dismissed. I didn’t then, and I still don’t understand why was that. They attempted to explain it, and I, though consider myself to be intelligent, couldn’t understand it. I am sure that in other places of work this wouldn’t have happened. They wouldn’t have dismissed someone who basically do the work.
BTW, I have been very successful in my following employments, which can testify that I am not a bad engineer.
It is important to emphasize that the review is subjective. It is related to how the managers grasp your work, the political power force between managers in the same department and so on. The result in unfair towards the employees regardless of how the company tries to portray it.
March 13th, 2012 at 7:36 pm
My personal experience with performance reviews is that they are at best an exercise of hypocrisy and at worst a cynical form of humiliating the employees. The performance review intends to make you believe there is some objective, factual, mensurable, reason for the company to pay you what you are currently earning and to place you in the functions you have now. Or to justify what the company is going to pay you next.
But none of that is true. You are an employee. The perception your management have of you is not really based on facts or mensurable concepts. It’s mostly socially driven, so to speak. If you have the right connections in your organization you are excellent. If you don’t you are average — and if anything goes wrong, you’re the one who will be “under-performer” and eventually fired. Not the ones who have the right connections.
If you are naïve and actually believe in performance reviews you can suffer a lot. You are on a path to always be confused and frustrated. Unless you have the right connections. If you have the right connections you’ll get raises every year, promotions, parking spaces, company cars, an office just for yourself. But if you have the right connections you are probably not naïve at all.
I personally would feel a lot better if companies just assumed that they will do what they please and stop the charade that performance reviews were turned into.
March 14th, 2012 at 4:58 pm
I’ve worked in 3 different countries and had “performance reviews” in each. I’ve also worked in academia as well as industry. Culbert is basically right. While there is a link between salary and performance, which seems normal in a business, the constraints on managers will bias the results of a performance review. I have seen this first hand in a company where I was rated below average despite achieving top research results (IEEE Transactions journal papers) and a patent - it had to do with cutting the salary budget.
If you think it’s bad in Anglo-saxon countries, try working in France where your performance review is computed in advance in a closed-door management meeting that does not include the interviewee. You have no chance of getting a fair go in such a system, which is essentially open loop. The managers use the review to give you behavioural therapy, ignore your objectives (”feelings are more important than truth”) and give you a rating that is the minimum of the ratings achieved across the various criteria (NOT the average!). This actually happened to me and other people I have spoken to.
March 15th, 2012 at 12:28 pm
We always dislike performance reviews as employees which is why we approach things differently know as employers. We don’t wait three months or a year to give people reviews and tell them what they’re doing something right or wrong. We spend a little time each week looking at targets and objectives, we give our staff control over their markets and expect them to present us with targets. This reduces tension and improves moral in the office.
March 24th, 2012 at 2:06 pm
This past December I got a performance review that was full of lies. I have been with the company for more than 10 years and always had great performance reviews(thanks god I kept copies). The boss (for 4 years) who gave me this review had already given me 4 great reviews. For example, he wrote lies such as I changed my hrs (in the summer) without approval. I had asked him if I can and he said yes. You would think if there was a problem with this he wouldn’t wait for my performance review to tell me so. HR got involved but took his side. I found out than that managers stick together.
I actually had a disagreement with him this past summer and he has been nasty to me since. Because he recently got promoted, a new manager was hired. Now I am having major problems with him as whenever he asks a question and I have to think a bit, he says things that intimidate me. Once when he called to his office I said just give me 5 min need to wrap up this project I am working on. He said I am your supervisor and you need to come now. There is more to this but I better leave out the details (you never know who is reading this).
Career diva, do you think I need to get a lawyer involved?
March 24th, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Hello Sad girl,
It’s hard to say if you need a lawyer or not, since I’m not hearing anything that’s happened that would warrant legal action. It does sound like they’re being unfair, but that doesn’t rise to something illegal. Managers throwing their weight around is nothing new, but if you feel they’re trying to push you out because of your gender, age, race, etc., then that’s another story.
May 3rd, 2012 at 11:27 am
The problem lies here:
People think “management” is something you can learn in school.
WROOONGG!! Management is an art, and you need to have very
good people skills to become a good manager. People skills
are not taught in school, they are learned in the real world.
That is what we can call “real education”. Many successful
businessmen didn’t even finish high school.
You also need to have virtues in your character like empathy,
sincerity, and respect for other people to be able to develop
good people skills.
The problem in corporations is that too many “coffe drinking”
middle management , that don’t do any REAL work, and keep
calling meetings, and finding out problems with everyone else
to make themselves look important. If your company has
as many “coffee drinking middle managers” as the people
actually doing the REAL work, then run away !
July 11th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
I just received my first review at my present job. It was totally unfair and based purely on my boss’s personal opinion of me, but of course worded in such a way to seem otherwise. I was one of the 10% who get a below average review. This is the worst review I have ever gotten and I’ve been working many, many years. I expect to be let go at some point, since the things brought up in the review were either related to personality traits I can’t change or negative opinions about my work that were overblown. Too bad there are no anti-bullying laws to protect workers from people like my boss (I have also been subjected to snide, nasty comments).
December 4th, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Gosh AJ, sounds like we have the same boss.