performance reviews human resources issues

Performance reviews have become a “mainstream practice,” dictated by rote routine and ritual rather than on an earnest desire to improve performance, motivate employees, or make meaningful changes to the organizational culture (Culbert, ). Because of the spurious nature of performance reviews, there is a strong movement to change how reviews are conducted or even eliminate them altogether. There are several problems with performance reviews from a methodological standpoint. Some are criteria deficient: they fail to measure what really matters on the job. For example, a performance review can accurately tell the manager or supervisor—or the employee—that they are a great team player when in fact their job really depends more on working solo. Some performance reviews are invalidated because they are the inappropriate tool altogether, designed for a totally different population or situation. In many cases, performance reviews themselves are not the problem, which is more related to how the performance reviews are issued or more importantly, how the results are interpreted and applied.

Many employees perceive performance reviews negatively because they do seem meaningless, and can even cause work-related stress, and lower employee moral and motivation (“Yes, Everyone Really Does Hate Performance Reviews,” 2010). Performance reviews can be “intimidating,” (Haun, 2011). Rather than measuring actual contributions, numbers, and metrics, some performance reviews are based on subjective impressions of employees—which can be even more damaging than even those instruments that have criterion validity problems. Some performance reviews are unilateral in nature, disallowing for the nuances of situational variables or employee responses to their feedback. Even in best –case scenarios when the reviews are valid and accurate, the results may not even be used in ways that benefit the company. Investing the time, energy, and money into performance reviews should yield a return on investment but as Haun (2011) points out, few organizations are maximizing the potential of the performance reviews that actually do measure accurately key skills and qualities.

The best approach to performance review is not to do away with them entirely. Just as teachers need to assess student learning, managers need to assess employee performance. The assessments illustrate what is working and what is not, and points the way towards a meaningful dialogue that can lead to improved productivity and other organizational objectives. In some organizations, it may be possible to do away with performance reviews altogether and replace them with a new company policy and organizational culture that supports bilateral communication, dialogue, and transformational leadership. By empowering employees to speak up and offer feedback, managers encourage a workplace in which employees are active participants in their own self-improvement. Employees that know where they stand, and are given feedback for their work regularly will not fear the performance review because of its high stakes claim. Some of the most promising employees end up leaving the organization because their performance reviews do not accurately reflect their potential contributions to the company.

A performance review should be more comprehensive and allow for bilateral communication. Few performance reviews can accurately test for all job-related criteria in accurate and comprehensive ways. Likewise, few managers are emotionally and socially intelligent enough to overcome barriers to communication and understanding based on gender, race, class, and other diversity variables. If the goal of performance reviews is to single out the high performers from the simply mediocre, that might work, but when using performance reviews to stigmatize and label employees who simply need more feedback is a huge mistake. Changing the organizational culture is often a better approach to reaching the optimized results the company needs.