Why do you do performance evaluations?
Is it because it’s viewed as part of the strategy to achieve organizational goals? Because everyone does performance evaluations and we should too? Because someone went to an HR Trends conference and saw a cool tool to make them easy to do?
The only reason to take any action in an organization is because it furthers or supports organizational goals.
– Be Uncommon
If you don’t have a strategically defensible reason for doing performance evaluations, you could decide to do away with traditional reviews altogether.
What about documentation?
The number one cry of pain I hear when I suggest doing away with performance evaluations is “what about the documentation? We need evaluations to have evidence of poor performance.”
We need performance documentation but…
- Competent managers are having documented conversations about performance all the time – at least they should be. For these managers, the traditional review ends up being a summary or repetition of what’s already been said (and written). Not that this is a bad thing, but it is a huge lift of time and energy to do what’s already been done.
- Poor managers on the other hand are not having conversations about performance when they should. So one of several things usually happen: They turn in nothing (with or without consequence); they turn in “meets expectations” when nothing of the sort has actually occurred; they turn in everything the person has done wrong in their life and you end up with a crying (and possibly litigious) employee in your office.
- HR managers spend inordinate amounts of time and energy planning, communicating, haranguing, pleading, threatening, complaining, cleaning up after the process and then prepare to do it again in a few months.
Why would we waste the time, energy and angst on this?
Everything we do in human resources should be aligned with organizational strategy and should START with organizational strategy. These questions apply to any activity we are asked to or we want to implement.
Be strategic. Be Uncommon.