Though the performance review process is widely acknowledged to be flawed, few if any organizations are doing away with reviews. Employees need feedback, after all, and managers need agreement on professional goals.
The process is fraught. Reviews make many employees anxious, and overworked managers even more stressed. The Corporate Executive Board estimates that training, filling out forms and other activities associated with the review process consume more than 200 hours annually for the average manager. In IT, a thorough performance review takes multiple hours to write and requires the manager to gather input from the employee’s peers in IT and customers in the rest of the organization. In addition to reviewing the prior year’s performance, a good review should also include discussion of next year’s goals and training/certification opportunities.
In short, you have ample reason to assess and streamline your own process. And because so much is being said within the industry these days about the need to do that, it’s possible to gather some good ideas. For example, working within your organization’s HR policies, you can do the following things:
Early in my career, I was fortunate to have a manager who said, “My job is to give away my job.” He explained that if he could help me acquire new skills, I could take over some of his responsibilities, preparing me for greater responsibility and freeing him to take on new assignments. He did not wait for an annual performance review to provide assessment and encouragement to his staff; he was a source of continuous feedback for everyone who worked for him.
Don’t let current industry news tempt you to decimate the performance review process. When done properly, it is still an excellent tool for aligning individual performance and goals with corporate business objectives. But don’t wait for next year’s performance reviews to let employees know what is expected or appreciated. And if you want to deliver a real surprise during an employee’s review, ask him how he thinks you’re doing! Just be prepared to accept his feedback graciously — and keep smiling!
Bart Perkins is managing partner at Louisville, Ky.-based Leverage Partners Inc., which helps organizations invest well in IT. Contact him at BartPerkins@LeveragePartners.com.