Would abolishing annual performance reviews be a good idea??

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I read an article this morning written by someone touting themselves as a "management expert" and he was making the case that annual performance reviews are a waste of time and aren't very effective in accomplishing what they are intended to do.

This is a relevant topic for me because I have a review coming up in the next couple of months.

The writer of the article argued that annual reviews are too "one sided" and rather than being an open dialogue, a boss is instead required to grade an employee based on a scale often similar to the way a teacher would grade a students paper and that many reviews focus more on the bad than on the good.

He also talked about how a performance review more or less boils down to one persons opinion of you, which is bound to have biases. He said (and I agree with him on this) that the same employee could receive three vastly different performance reviews from three different bosses.

In my opinion, an annual review is silly because so much changes in a business in the course of a year (or heck even in a week or a month!). In a prior job, our boss gave us a monthly evaluation. It wasn't scored, it was just an informal review of how he felt we were doing and where we needed to improve and we were welcome to give any feedback on him as well. I liked this system and it seemed to work well.

The article writer also feels that a boss can use performance reviews as a way to "blame" his subordinates for poor performance. For example, if the boss misses his sales goals, he'll retaliate by giving his employees sub par reviews because he feels they are the ones who caused him to miss the goals.

I've seen this happen in the real world. I worked for a crappy manager who never took responsibility for his own screw-ups, he would always blame them on others and usually the Regional Manager believed him. When review time came, he gave his entire staff low scores on account of the store's poor performance.

The Regional Manager then used those low review scores to fire two very good employees and replace them. Consequently, the replacements had problems with the manager too the store performance stayed low. Eventually the company realized where the real problem was and canned both the Manager AND the Regional Manager who had been protecting him.

Also most reviews come with the possibility of an annual merit increase. I've written on here before about when my manager scored me a 49 and I needed a 50 to qualify for a higher raise. It's tough for me to swallow sometimes that my raise is contingent on how one person feels about me, but, as the article writer states, that's how it's always been with annual reviews.

[Magpie]

Then there's the places that require that each group have a certain percentage of people in each category. Which means that the elite group, taken from people in the top of their groups, has to mark some people as needing improvement.

[joe hx]

At <old pizza place>, the performance reviews had a list of items that were rated from 1 to 5 (or 0 to 5, I don't remember). 1 was bad, 5 was perfect. It was company policy that no one was allowed to get fives. I consistently got fours.

The article writer also feels that a boss can use performance reviews as a way to "blame" his subordinates for poor performance. For example, if the boss misses his sales goals, he'll retaliate by giving his employees sub par reviews because he feels they are the ones who caused him to miss the goals.

see my sig.

[wagegoth]

Annual performance reviews are a complete waste of time. I decline to rant about all the reasons, but I agreed with the article.

[JLG]

I agree with the article!

This happens to me all the time. The assistant that gives me my review bases it on one negative thing. There was some stupid drama going on at work and I got mentioned when it had nothing to do with me. And it was outside stuff that got brought into work. The assistant put on my next two reviews that I gossip too much at work. The second time she put that on my review I told her to give me the last time and date that I gossiped. Of course she could not provide that information but said that she just knows I have done that.

The assistant then became the manager and when I got my next review by the other assistant he said that I need to improve on my productivity. This is how he came up with that.....

It was a Saturday afternoon and he told me to push out some new merchandise from the stockroom. Right after I brought the stuff out on the floor I got called to my register for back up and I was stuck on the register for ONE HOUR. Right after the line was gone he called me and asked if I was done pushing out the merchandise. I told him no because I was on the register for an hour. He told me that I should have been able to push that out in one hour and I am working to slow Umm hello I just told you were I have been. He then told the manager the next day and she had a talk with me and I told her what happened.

A situation like it happened again and like before I was on the register. Again the assistant said my productivity was bad. He told the manager and she talked to me about it. I was so furious that I told the store manager that my productivity is not bad and I am on the register for 90% of my shift because enough cashiers are not scheduled so that prevents me from doing my floor work.

I just had my review and guess what was on it? Yup I need to improve on my productivity.

So now I am labeled as a gossip with low productivity.

[Sableonblonde]

What I think are even more useless than perfomance reviews are self-performance reviews. I had to do one at my last job and at my current one. At my previous job I gave myself the highest possible ratings because, honestly, I thought I was doing a kick ass job. Then my boss ranks me way lower. Seriously, what is the point of me rating myself if it isn't going to have any kind of effect on anything? All that matters is what the boss says. Heck, I'd never missed a single day or been even a minute late one time, and I still didn't even get the highest rating for dependability Really, really pointless.

[Evil Queen]

We have semi-annual performance reviews and I need those things! I've gotten quite a few raises because of them!

[KellyHabersham]

Out of the jobs I've had, the only one where I had a problem with performance reviews was with Macy's, and that had more to do with how much the store credit card was tied into things for sales associates. It goes without saying that we'd get marked down for not meeting goals for opening new accounts, but we would also be marked down if not enough of our sales came from customers using their store card. (In other words, I think that part of the performance review should've been abolished or not counted as much.......not like customers could be forced to use credit cards or to sign up for one)

[mikoyan29]

Annual reviews are a good thing if they are a two way street.

[TOLady]

I work in an organization that has both interim and final reviews.

We must write our own assessments to be reviewed by the "PTB", although we all know that the budget has been pre-assessed and it doesn't matter a hoot what we've done.

In the 15 years I have worked with said org I have had 8 individuals I have had to report to (different section within the same department of the org (one overall department - different sections)- they keep switching up to whom I have to report).

I've kept to the same style of a narrative.

I actually directly work for 6 - 8 people in my organization - many high maintanence (can't photocopy their own travel dockets, or fax a document - which is fine - that keeps me employed).

I was really disappointed after my last review that I had not received an "exceeds some". I had really worked my ass off and had done some extra work that should have put me over.

Howeverk, I found out that my "reviewer/Manager" hadn't even spoken to any of the people I worked for.

Not. A. One. of them had been approached to see how my performance had been.

I did ask them and they said that they were not approached (and yes - I did report this to HR).

Are you kidding me?

Freakin' Hell!

Performance Reviews - In my humble opinion - are a company's way of not giving people their due.

Decisions are made - $ - way ahead of this - and us peons are meant to suck it up in "the recession"!

I, personally, saved my organization more than $5,000 last year, through being able to offer people within my organization free admission to relevent events (I volunteer for).

Do you think I'll get recognition for that?

No fucking way!

And no - I don't want to hear that I shouldn't give the admissions away for free. The people I work with should go to these events and it's not costing me anything. I do for those organizations a favour, and they let me give a few passes.

Sorry to rant - but I'm very pissed that some of the people I work for will get their 15% bonus, and I won't even get a cost of living!

However - I am still happy to have my job and the benefits I get.

In short - Reviews are a crock!

[anyanka2]

That writer had many good points.

I have to agree that annual reviews are useless, especially when people know when they are scheduled. They may be unproductive 49 weeks out of the year and super productive the other 3 weeks before the review. If there have to be annual reviews, spread them out throughout the year so that people don't get complacent.

That was the scenario among the people who had ordering and stocking duties at my former workplace. One person who was notorious for coasting and bitching about everyone else not working hard enough to the manager upped his productivity around the second week of March. Reviews happen around the first week of April.

My first year I got a 5 cent raise. That pissed me off because I work hard and people who didn't work as hard and had the same duties, but sucked up to the manager and were male got a higher raise than I did. I did get a significant raise, 15 cents when I took over ordering a couple months later. The next year after he announced his retirement, everyone got significant raises. That lead us to believe that he didn't actually do reviews. I left in January and from talking to co-workers, some were happy with their raises and others were pissed. Several people got 5 cents (a joke IMO) or nothing at all.

[Rapscallion]

Our reviews are a joke. They really are. It's just sit down once a year with a member of the HR team and chat.

There's no comeback for anything in the review feedback from your colleagues. If you did crap, you're either shuffled off to an easier job (usually not involving the feedback sessions, actually), or it's ignored.

Sounds great, right? Heh - try being an overperformer, knowing that serial underperformers and incompetents are going to be rewarded with easier work.

Rapscallion

[Ben_Who]

I've been lucky; I get reasonably good performance reviews and I have a boss who is neither incompetent nor vindictive. Besides, our raises are tied to the contract, not performance. However, I can see the uselessness of performance reviews - there's this desperate attempt on behalf of companies to quantify something very hard to quantify - employee performance.

My roommate, after consistently good performance reviews and high performance on those areas of his job which can be quantified, like number of telephone sales, was recently fired for trumped up reasons, more or less because his new manager just didn't happen to like him and wanted to make an example to the rest of the department. His union can't help but note the discrepancies between his performance as quantified by his reviews and the manager's attitude towards him, and a grievance has been filed.

Love, Who?

[TawnyMyst]

I like what our work has done, instead of an annual performance review, they have instituted proficiency tests. Each manager, of 3, has to do 2 proficiency tests per year on each employee on safety and maintenance protocols that we are trained and required to follow. If we fail, we are coached on how we went wrong and how to do it right the next time, fail 2 and we have to re-train in that procedure, fail 3 and a statement is required and we can receive points. Our work follows the Brown system and no one can be fired until they reach 60 points or are convicted of a felony, or cause severe property damage, injure or kill someone on the job. Unfortunately, this often means that the most incompetent can keep their jobs indefinitely if they make it thru probation.

[ottid]

We had reviews, once, last year, at around this time. Haven't heard a word about them this year though. Mind you, one of the points I brought up was to have better communication between weekend and weekday staff (two stores in the same mall, but the person who relays most of the messages really only knows about the stuff regarding the store as a whole, and the stuff in the books store, nothing about Stationery, all I wanted was to have someone work Friday night and Saturday, and another to do Saturday lunch and Sunday, just to have a bit of continuity ).

Other point was to have more staff meetings so that the casuals know what's up (heck, even some of the full time staff) and to make sure everyone is up to speed on any training that needs being done. Do you think that we have had a single meeting since?

Points made to me: I need to keep my uniform neat and tidy (ever had a shirt collar that just won't sit right, happened to be doing that to me on the day of the review). I also need to read "How to win friends and influence people" for some reason.

Points made to CW (when reading through the lines): Look like a pole dancer, have no friends, dark horse, nobody likes you... Ok, well I think you get the pcture.

I don't really have any idea why we had them, apart from I think corporate pushed for them (and even then we are a franchise, so what are they worried about? They don't employ me, at all, just my boss, his trade name is different to the store name), and there was really no point, just an excuse for my boss to offend almost all of hs employees.