Ed Cornelius, one of my favorite grad school professors, told the story of being hired by the Navy to develop a new performance review form. After meeting one-on-one with multiple naval officers to better understand the challenge, Dr. Cornelius went back to the admiral who had engaged him and said, You don't need a new form, you need a new process. The admiral responded, Dr. Cornelius, I hired you to develop a new form. Are you going to develop a new form or shall I engage someone else?
Many organizations are committed to the traditional performance review process. And to be fair, this approach can provide effective performance feedback when upper management commitment is strong and managers are well-trained in how to conduct them. But like the Navy, when these organizations observe it's not working as well as it should, they think the problem is the form.
Meanwhile, many other organizations have concluded that the annual or semi-annual review is largely a waste of time for their cultures. Managers in these organizations hate traditional reviews because they tend to create conflict. Employees hate them because the feedback isn't timely - it might occur months after the actual performance took place - and they sense its primary purpose is to justify smaller than expected pay increases.
Whether or not we should have annual performance reviews is the wrong question. The right question is, How do we provide timely performance feedback that is meaningful to our workers and improves performance?
If an organization lacks a system for generating timely, neutral feedback, I guarantee the only time employees receive feedback is when they do something wrong. My article on Bad Referees covers this natural, human phenomenon in more detail.
Attempting to train supervisors and managers on how to give more positive feedback has mixed results. They typically end up using the feedback sandwich technique. The feedback sandwich wraps two positives around a negative. Such as:
You met our $10,000 monthly goal last month, well done. Too bad you had 7 emergency call-backs - you need to improve the quality of your service in order to cut down on those. But I'm glad to see you're achieving our volume targets.
This widely used technique also has its share of critics. My perspective is that, like the annual review, the feedback sandwich is better than giving no feedback or only negative feedback. But there are better ways.
Take sports, for example. After each game, coaches review key statistics with the players. The quarterback reviews metrics like how many passes he attempted and completed. Defensive players review how many tackles they made and how many plays they found themselves out of position, etc. The coaches even grade the players on their performance based solely on those metrics. Pro golfers track how many fairways they hit and how many putts they stroked during the round to see if they need to spend more time hitting drives or stroking putts during their next practice session.
Today, even small organizations have access to performance data much more quickly than they ever have before. Some systems are able to provide real-time reporting on critical performance metrics. Smart companies are harnessing that data into meaningful feedback that's easy for the employee to understand and is perceived to be fair and neutral. That's why dashboards and report cards are more motivating than annual reviews or the feedback sandwich.
A true HR Business Partner can help your organization develop feedback tools that motivate. Not a new form, but a new process that provides timely, neutral and fair feedback relative to individual, group or company goals.
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