Agile Performance Reviews

What are we doing wrong?

By and large, the annual performance review process at most companies is broken. The very idea of having a meaningful conversation about performance once per year is laughable. Unfortunately, this mentality persists in many of today’s corporations. Most people simply don’t know a better way, and despite constant grumbling and cynicism from the staff about the process, few companies are willing to change.

To change, either keep performance reviews as they are or eliminate performance reviews. This article is an attempt to propose a third solution to the problem.

Certainly Adding Objectivity Couldn’t Be Bad

For the companies that do accept the need to change, they generally end up going the wrong direction. They hear complaints about the process being unfair in one way or another, and they attempt to pile on a bunch of objectivity in order to correct the perceived unfairness.

There are two main problems with your KRA and Objectivity. The first is that any key performance indicators that are easy to measure are rarely the things that you really care about. The second major problem with this approach is that, even conceding that you can find very specific things on which to measure performance, human judgement still has to enter the picture in order to make a rating for that key performance indicator. As soon as human judgement enters the picture, all objectivity is cast out the window.

I completely understand why it seems like we should strive for objectivity, but I feel strongly that objectivity is the wrong approach. In addition to the reasons mentioned above, the strengths that make one employee good at their job are completely different than the strengths that make another employee, in the same role, good at their job. Adding objectivity to your performance reviews is an uphill battle that you’ll lose every time.

Move Away From KRA and Towards Free-form Feedback

Instead of rating employees on row after row of key performance indicators, try providing them with meaningful feedback about behaviors that they exhibit. While results are what the company wants to see, targeting behaviors that lead to those results is the proper way to give feedback to an employee, positive or negative. This feedback should target behavior, should be specific enough for the employee to understand what was desirable or undesirable about that behavior, and should explain why you care about that behavior.

On a side note, for feedback to have the maximum impact, it needs to happen as close to the observed behavior as possible. What this means is that anything that appears on an employee’s review should have already been discussed with that employee at some point during the review period. If the employee is surprised by something on their performance review, you have some work to do as a manager.

Instead of trying to come up with specific criteria for each job, strive to provide the employees with positive and negative feedback based on the mission, vision, and core values of your company. Here are some examples of what that might look like.

Q. What does the employee do well?

• When we needed a QTP solution for a customer, you stepped up and volunteered to learn new technologies to make it happen. Always add value.
• When on an extended support call, you overheard the customer mention she was hungry and schedule call after lunch break of an hour. Delight the customer.
• When a customer installed software on their server that broke certain functionalities, you got the team together to come up with a solution. Create and innovate.

Q. What could the employee start doing that they don’t already do?

• I know you don’t like to sit through customer support calls, but sometimes that support reps really need developer input to solve problems.

Goooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaals

I’m sure we’ve all heard that goals need to be S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, and Realistic, Timely). But do we need goals at all? Personally, I feel that if an employee clearly understands the expectations of the job, they can be successful. I’m not going to force anyone to come up with some arbitrary number of personal or professional growth goals above that. I would certainly prefer that someone stretch themselves and attempt to exceed those normal duties, but just meeting expectations is still a successful employee.

However, there’s a big difference between a successful employee and a “strong” or “outstanding” employee. If I choose to spend my time at home playing with my kids instead of attending training or reading books about leadership, I don’t think I should be penalized for that. I can still come into work and do a good job.

Feedback From Your Peers

One of the most powerful aspects of a performance review is feedback from peers. There are many ways to collect and deliver said feedback, but I usually anonymize feedback in order to encourage candor and honesty. However, this does not mean that anyone can say anything about another person and be off the hook. If you can’t back up your feedback with specific behavior, you’re not helping, you’re complaining. Complaining is not going to go on a review.

Recognize that not everyone is going to be comfortable providing feedback about their peers. Some people will only give you positive feedback, some people will provide very vague (and thus unhelpful) feedback, and some people will give you no feedback at all. Don’t push too hard, but feel free to train others in the organization about how to provide feedback, and ensure that you’ll keep the feedback anonymous in order to garner candor. It might take several review cycles to get everyone comfortable with providing feedback, but the results are definitely worth it.

We’re All Still Just A Number

Lastly, because at some point we HAVE to, but not because I like to, we have to rank employees against a known scale. I’ve played around with a lot of scales, and the one I like the most is essentially a five point scale that goes something like unsuccessful, variable, successful, strong, and outstanding. Right in the middle is “successful”, which is just what it sounds like. You come in everyday, you meet expectations, you get the job done. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but there’s room to grow.

Unsuccessful employees simply aren’t getting the job done, and are usually causing a distraction in the workplace. It’s quite rare for an employee to receive an unsuccessful rating on an official review, because unsuccessful employees are generally removed from the organization long before a formal review is conducted.

Variable employees can be outstanding at some tasks and unsuccessful at others. Variable employees also tend to not be with the organization for very long, so seeing a variable rating on a review is typically pretty rare. Certainly the same employee should never get a variable rating twice in a row. A variable employee who is not improving is probably one that should be removed from the organization.

Strong employees tend to perform at very high levels most of the time. Not only are they performing their job very well, but they’re pushing themselves towards growth by reaching outside of their comfort zone.

Finally, outstanding employees excel at everything they do, and encourage others to do so at every opportunity. Outstanding employees are typically rare.

So, we’re still just numbers…!!!

Must Read Sample Performance Review