How do you approach performance reviews in a way that will benefit employees and improve their work and compliance?
Books such as “Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews” provide an array of canned comments you can use. Problem is, they may not help you make a person-to-person connection. Co-author Robert Bacal, quoted in The Wall Street Journal, says the popularity of such books shows that managers are “deceiving themselves into thinking what they are doing is an objective process.”
If you have to write the review, you are also saying something about yourself. Written comments actually can be incriminating for the manager. Poor performance of staffers seems to show that the manager may have failed to manage someone as effectively as others. Some managers inflate the grades of their staffers in an attempt to make themselves look better.
Telling the truth about performance also leads to further responsibility. If an employee is not doing the job, you then have to figure out how to make the situation better. If people are already doing a good job, you have to figure out how to reward them.
One manager quoted in the Journal says his least-favorite criticism is calling a worker a “non-team player.” It is frequently used to demoralize overachievers who deserved promotions but didn’t get them. Rather than review staffers’ work annually, it would be much better to talk with people occasionally throughout the year, some experts say. Organizations are often reluctant to change review policies, since they give the company some protection from risk.
Career Rating is a great tool for doing effective performance reviews.
