It’s Time to Rethink Performance Management

How many of you detest the thought of completing employee performance reviews? This thought applies equally to both those conducting and receiving the review. My observation – if you feel this trepidation, then you have no godly idea on how to conduct an employee review appropriately.

Most people dislike this annual ritual because they are uncomfortable giving what might be perceived as negative feedback. Heads-up, if you are giving an employee “negative” performance feedback for the first time during a performance review, you have failed as a leader. No employee, let me repeat, no employee should be surprised by negative feedback given during a performance review.

Don’t get me wrong. I support contemporaneously memorializing performance discussions with employees. I understand the legal necessity to demonstrate that an employee has been appropriately informed that his/her performance needs improvement and that corrective action is necessary. This action can be accomplished in real-time and outside the “formal” employee review process.

Over my 40 years of professional experience, I have responded to numerous EEOC charges, suggesting that my organization was “capricious and arbitrary” when discharging an employee for underperformance. Furthermore, the terminated employee would often tell the EEOC that they had no idea why they were “let go.” By the way, there is no real penalty for a charging employee’s lack of truthfulness. In any case, every separating employee should be given a clear explanation of why they were discharged.

I get it. Organizations need to keep records of employee underperformance. I am merely suggesting that yesterday’s performance review process is not the best use of anyone’s time. Furthermore, in a 2015 Harvard Business Review article by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, entitled Reinventing Performance Management, they suggest that “once-a-year goals are too ‘batched’ for a real-time world, and conversations about year-end ratings are generally less valuable than the conversations conducted in the moment about actual performance.”

Let’s face it, it’s the end of the business plan year, and supervisors are hurrying to get performance evaluations completed for their department. In a rush to complete this process, employees are given short shrift by supervisory completing “check the box” evaluations. Maybe the employee gets fifteen minutes of his/her supervisor’s time. From an employee engagement perspective, that’s not very useful.

It is time to turn this process on its head. First of all, and traditional HR types hate when I say this, but the bureaucratic evaluation document itself is the least important aspect of any evaluation. It is the conversation that is important—yes, actually spending time talking to an employee about what he/she does well and how they might perform at an even higher level if they further developed a specific skill or closed a competency gap. Think fundamental Leader-Member Exchange Theory.

Again, according to Buckingham and Goodall, they suggest that organizations “are in need of something nimbler, real-time, and more individualized – something squarely focused on fueling performance in the future rather than assessing the past. I agree.

In my opinion, employees would better benefit from more frequent developmental discussions, especially following a recently completed activity or project. That way, the supervisor can discuss specific aspects of performance, both positive and negative, and talk about how the project or activity might be approached more effectively in the future. This way, both the supervisor and employee have a clearer picture of the person’s specific performance. The consulting firm Deloitte found a more direct and measurable correlation between the frequency of performance conversations and engagement of team members.

I prefer to call this an Employee Development Dialogue, with more focus on the future versus the past. Can you see the longer-term employee engagement benefit?

There are two books that I would like to recommend that addresses two of the issues outlined in this article. They are Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott and Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss.  My MBA leadership class is reading both books this semester.

Ray Peters is MBA Director & Leadership Instructor at Nicholls State University. He can be reached at ray.peters@nicholls.edu. •