Performance Reviews
My guess is that if I polled a bunch of HR people, I would find a vast majority of them hate doing periodic performance reviews and hate having to insist that the supervisors in their organizations conduct them. Am I right? Of course I am. My thinking?
I question the wisdom of insisting on a process with so little apparent value!
Anyone who has been in HR for some time also knows that most supervisors in their organizations hate doing them. It’s a chore that the company says needs to be done. But they either put it off until the last minute or they set easy targets for their people to meet, or they give most of their team an average score.
The easiest ones for them to do are the superstars and the ones standing in the doorway on a banana peel waiting for someone to give them a shove.
The ones that they hate doing are the ones who they need to have on their team to get the work done. The soldiers who show up every day and never create a problem. The supervisor’s dilemma is how to keep this group motivated. They can’t always give them more money. They can’t always promise them a promotion for the good work they do.
I know, someone “upstairs” says the performance reviews need to be done, so the supervisors do them. In my experience, this process is a waste of time and accomplishes little.
I have read more than a thousand of them over the past 40 years. Most are generic junk. A bunch of words copied from the last review or feel good words so they don’t have to deal with a confrontation with the employee.
In more than a few situations those feel good reviews have given a plaintiff’s attorney a lot of reasons to smile.
Supervisor – “The guy was a poor performer. I had to let him go.”
Attorney in the discovery process – “The record shows you gave him several average or above average reviews!”
See where that conversation is going? Oh, ya. Get the check book out, employer.
More on this next time. Some ideas for you to think about.
