Is It Time To Kill The Dinosaur Practice Of Annual Performance Reviews?

From a newly launched startup to an established enterprise, a poorly timed annual performance review practice is a huge turn-off for its employees and management. In fact, it is the most feared workplace practice in use today. Both the employees as well as managers tend to hate this dinosaur practice of annual performance review. The foremost reason being: it often results in instilling fear among your staff and demotivates them.

Unfortunately, a staggering number of people reported to be discontent with the practice of yearly performance reviews. On the other hand, an equal number of employees believe that this archaic practice fails in offering accurate information thereby, leading to biased appraisals and employee recognitions. These can be few neon signs or reasons your annual performance review process might need a reboot.

The billion-dollar question remains: Why this quintessential aspect of employment is fast becoming a pointless thing? Is it time we kill the stone-age practice of yearly performance reviews and shift to a cloud based performance management software? Let’s find out:

1.) Control:

Today’s workforce, which mostly consists of millennials perceive purpose, expertise and independence as essential keystones of their professional lives. For business managers and leaders, these factors serve a lot like table stakes to encourage their people inherently. These aspects prompt a sense of passion in individuals thereby, helping to bring out the best in them. On the other hand, when a business treats its people as cogs in the wheel, their expertise and strengths are hardly put to use or go untraced.

2.) Evolution Of Managers:

The orthodox concept of managers as bosses is fast becoming an old-fashioned one. Today, it is time for leaders to be coaches. They ought to identify and acknowledge goals, skill-sets and morale levels of their people. In simple words, the role of leaders in today’s digital era is to unleash the potential of their employees rather than taming them. In fact, leaders are very much like guardians these days and thus, are accountable to care for the people they lead.

3.) Driving Away From Performance Reviews:

If the archaic practice of performance review turns obsolete, then what should be replacing it? Besides arming your HR department with an automated performance management software, it is advisable to embrace the following practices when it comes to performance appraisals in today’s era:

• Conduct a set of weekly and quarterly discussions with employees.
• Always keep a track of employee morale levels preferably on weekly basis and try to determine the engagement levels and drivers.
• Provide your people with time say a quarter’s time to think over their performance and improvement areas.
• Organise formal performance meet-ups or discussions every quarter.
• Exclude discussions related to compensations or remunerations from performance meet-ups.
• Align the entire workforce towards the organisation’s goal.

A modern performance review approach is the one that focuses on helping employees in resolving problems that are critical and beneficial for the organisation rather than indulging in those obscure discussions that revolve around unrealistic goals. Understand the fact that performance review is not a process, but in fact is a discussion and the goal here is to help employees discover their inner best.

For a staggering number of employees worldwide, the practice of yearly performance review tends to hinder their productivity, whereas for others, it is plain irrelevant to their tasks or roles. These are few reasons that are resulting in the sad and slow demise of the dinosaur practice of annual performance reviews.

Gone are the days of pushing a paper or process that accredits leaders as the commanders. Performance review discussions ought to empower employees and help them improve on a month on month basis and not year over year.

Bottom Line:

As mentioned above, a majority of employees dislike undergoing performance reviews and millennials especially hate them to the core. This is because a whopping number of Gen-Y employees aka millennials strongly believe in the fact that annual performance reviews should undergo a total overhaul in order to be more employee-friendly.

Lastly yet importantly, business managers and leaders ought to understand the grim reality that poorly timed performance reviews is cited as one of the common reasons for employees to leave a company. The best performance management software or practice is the one, which includes providing frequent and relevant feedbacks to the employees on a quarterly or weekly basis. Brownie point: businesses can enjoy a steep surge in employee engagement levels.