Yearly Performance Review

Yearly Performance Review

Yes, most corporations with Fiscal Year end near Calendar Year end are going through them now, thanks Jack Welch.

In principle, I agree with performance review concept. Actually when you go through most of them, they are great...on paper.

In essence they review employee performance vs. a set of objectives set at the beginning of the FY, providing feedback and ideally a sort of 360 view.

So far so good.

After that, employees are rated in a 5 bands system (it looks same HR Management consultants have sold the very same system to most corporations, we all have the 5 ratings...just names are changed).


In fact, we have gone through hundreds of them since kindergarten...doesn't it sound familiar? Is the good old A, B, C, D, E school rating.

Here it comes the 1st potential issue: if manager setting objectives didn't do a good job setting or tracking them, it is a useless act of faith.

Next, the so called 'calibration' or in other words, a ranking...and problems start right here.

Most companies have a forced distribution, plotting employees rating in a Gauss bell; most of employee population will be around the mean, and just a few ones by the edges.

What the heck is that? Does it mean high performance teams do not exist? And, how is it possible comparing different professionals, with different objectives, assets, baselines, etc. ?

To make it worse, there is another problem: it assumes a fair behaviour. Most people have it, but not all of us. Thinking differently is naive.

There are two ways to look better in a ranking:

The fair one: you do better than the rest. Full stop.

The unfair one: making the rest looking worse than you...I call those employees 'rotten apple'. As they are so mediocre they cannot be better than the rest, they devote a huge share of their time and effort to undermine the others, do not share information, take credit (even from their own employees if by chance they are people managers), etc. And, like any rotten apple, if not taken apart they rot the whole basket (aka department). I'm sure all of us have somebody in mind right now...

That happens within a given department...but as Managers, Directors and VPs go through the same process, it replicates at all levels, making the whole organization weaker, instead of stronger.

It fosters cliquish behaviour and prevents innovation as people do not take risks.

Key take aways

KSF for a good rating process is an excellent objective and goal setting  process ('SMART' rule) and a professional scorecard/dashboard  to track them.

Even with excellent goals, there is no better feedback than real-time feedback and 'walk the talk'. Don't wait 1 year!

Ranking/calibration is bullshit, unless everybody does exactly the same job (it might work in a factory).

Ranking may foster lack of collaboration and innovation, as well as worsening teams as soon as somebody behaves in an unfair way.

Set a good variable compensation scheme, that drives top performance, innovation AND collaboration, and forget about the rating/ranking, as the compensation will do it for you.

Annual Performance Review

A performance evaluation is an integral aspect of any organization. Assessing the skill set of every person and the functioning of the organization is vital for its growth, and to help create the proper expectations for the company in regards to future raises and management potential. It helps employees to understand the meanings behind common phrases for performance evaluations to help create common ground between the employee and the company.

Annual Performance Review?  

If you're writing your own performance review it seems to me your supervisor isn't doing much or just doesn't have much of a job to do and is probably goofing off more than anything else. My recommendation would be to show where you excel with FACTS, for example how many items you sell, produce or place on the floor, based on whatever turnover of products and how it relates to the company profits. Do your efforts bring in more money ? Sure, they'd have to otherwise you wouldn't be working -- so give yourself a pat on the back -- and make sure you put that in your performance review.

Additionally, how much supervision do you do ? How many people, what do they do and do you schedule work for them or do their timesheets for them ? Any supervision means you are doing supervisory work - show it !

Also, what initiatives have you done or are you currently doing ? Do you put up posters to help market products and advertise your company's wares ? Have you helped in finding new products and services that your company has offered ? Put that in your reviews as well.

There are probably a lot more things you haven't thought of, just have a think while you're driving home sometime and you'll come up with a slew of things YOU have done that are worthy of an excellent review !!!

By-the-way, if you get a bad APR, don't stress about it, it WON'T follow you to your next job. Most of the time performance reviews are nothing more than TPS Reports and mean little other than to impress management and make them think they're accomplishing something they're not...Performance reports are in fact a BIG waste of money in a LOT of cases. I'd rather be earning money actually doing work that writing some inflated report that doesn't really express what a person is really worth to the company in reality...

How can a company judge a person based on something someone else with a twisted sense of reality wrote -- If I were your manager I'd want to actually SEE what you do and judge it for myself than read it from someone with a B.S. in English and grammatical studies.