If you agree, you have a fellow traveler…ME!
I have been the Chief Human Resources Officer twice in my career, and even while I was the CEO of several company’s I have never delivered on my threat to eliminate the annual performance review. Although I made some small steps along the way, I never really pulled the plug on the annual review, and I really regret that. In essence, I demonstrated just how stuck leaders are in old, and I believe outlived, paradigms.
On the other hand, I am not against reviews, and, if you have read any of my books, starting from the very first, I am a fanatic believer in performance evaluation, and feedback. So this is not a refutation of evaluation; in fact, it is a strong restatement of how important that process is. And…there is the whole point. Evaluation is a process, it is NOT an annual event.
Indeed, evaluation is a process that should be happening every single day, not every single year. We should be evaluating the performance of our associates every day and, giving them feedback on that performance. It may not be possible to change poor behavior and performance, but if behavior modification is going to happen, it is not going to happen by telling your associates how they are doing once a year. The annual review, assuming you have one, should simply be a restatement of 365 evaluations during the previous year. If it is a surprise, it will have virtually no impact on behavior, and indeed, it could be a demotivator.
The leader must be certain to be objective, but once that test if met, then the evaluation should be both positive and negative information. The desired behavior must be reinforced, and the negative behavior must be extinguished. If the associate is behaving badly, or is failing to achieve successful performance, it is essential that they know it, so that they can be given the coaching, and the opportunity to turn the performance around.
Down with the annual review: Up with the daily feedback session.
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