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Employee Performance Evaluation
As we approach the conclusion of another year, many of you who are gainfully employed may be subjected to the dreaded “performance review.” I put that term in quotes because what actually gets reviewed during these manager-employee meetings usually misses the mark. But first, some psychological context.
During my years attending what comedian George Carlin called a “Catholic prison school,” my classmates and I received our report cards one at a time while seated at the front of the room next to the teacher’s desk. The nun or priest in the catbird seat would work down the list—arithmetic, reading, penmanship, etc.—publicly announcing the grade earned on each subject for all one’s classmates to hear. The idea was to apply either shame or praise as a driver for improving student performance.
This is the archaic carrots-and-sticks approach to motivation. According to this misguided theory, make the kid feel proud, and they will work even harder. Inversely, given that we all desire approval from others, shaming the under-performing student will turn things around, or so they imagined. Well, research shows praise and criticism can provide short-term incentives to try harder, but the effect proves transient. Rewards and punishments can get us to push off from the starting blocks in whatever performance race we are running, but they won't keep us moving for long.
Report Cards for Adults
Now, fast forward to the modern workplace. In most organizations, performance reviews are a euphemism for report cards. Despite their complexity and erudite-sounding lexicons, the applicable rating systems are thinly veiled versions of letter grades. In an effort to avoid the obvious, these reviews usually use numbers instead of letters or employ descriptive terms (“meets standards” or “outstanding”) that, nonetheless, reflect the same prosaic format.
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Surveys by human resources organizations show that performance reviews not only fail to motivate workers but also prove distasteful for all involved—both employees and their managers. Meaning they often de-motivate. What’s more, there is little evidence they have a positive impact on what they purport to measure—performance. What really drives people to perform better are intrinsic motivators (those that connect with one’s heart and mind), such as a sense of meaning and purpose in one’s work, the opportunity to be creative, being included in decision-making, and an environment affording reasonable autonomy instead of suffocating micro-management.
In an effort to make the review process worthwhile, some organizations utilize “360 reviews” that incorporate feedback not only from one's manager but also from colleagues and even customers. Others add employee self-ratings and include goal-setting exercises. Regardless, these reviews can create a subconscious form of emotional age regression (“I’m back in grade school”), make a manager more like a school principal than a coach or mentor, and de-motivate rather than fire up the recipient. Inherent evaluator bias further undermines the credibility of the process. Research shows a manager’s personal feelings toward an employee usually override a dispassionate assessment of that individual’s work.
So why do it? For many organizations, it’s about covering one’s legal posterior. If an employee is going to be fired, the employer reduces its litigious risk by compiling evidence to justify doing so. So, some performance reviews are more like a grand jury proceeding in disguise. Granted, reducing legal liability isn’t always the driver. Some organizations and managers believe, errantly, that the review process actually drives better performance. Not.
So, what works? The best results (improving performance) arise when employees receive frequent, situation-specific feedback provided in a respectful and encouraging manner, along with a "fall forward" approach to substandard work. In other words, ditch the quarterly or annual performance reviews in favor of numerous check-in meetings where managers and employees exchange constructive feedback related to the ongoing flow of work.
After a bit of training for those involved, applying this approach is relatively simple, but the absence of employee report cards makes many leaders nervous, so the traditional, ineffective measurement of performance persists. In short, when it comes to the workplace, we fail to recognize that what matters can't always be measured, and what can be measured doesn't always matter.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
