Uselessness of Performance Reviews Alternative to Performance Reviews – Yes
How good is good? How bad is bad? Is this an uncorrectable condition? How do you line up with your co-workers? These are all questions that supervisors and managers have to deal with on a regular basis to decide who stays and who goes or who gets a raise and who doesn't. For decades the popular method of determining this has been performance reviews. Basically this consists of advising the employee of a set of skills or goals that they need to demonstrate by the next review (usually a year away) with a rating system to show how well that skill or goal has been achieved or not achieved.
This process is wrong because it's attempting to take a very subjective process and make it into an objective process. When one does this, it creates an environment of confusion for the supervisor and at that point, personal feelings for the employee getting the personal review to swing either toward caring or hatred. If the supervisor likes the employee, this is obviously not a problem but if the supervisor doesn't, it becomes a problem for the employee and could get worse if there is no neutral party that can be called in to review the performance review in question.
I have seen careers for many employees in all walks of life, perfectly competent but because of friction between them and their supervisor, lose their job based on a performance review. Upper management accepts the performance review because the employee is frequently instructed to countersign the reviews to acknowledge what is written. Many employees are cowed into doing this because of fear for something worse happening or there are no alternate actions that are mentioned. Still others sign in hopes that future reviews will be better.
How should one measure an employee's performance? In the case of those employees who appear to have problems in doing their day-to-day tasks, all reviews should be held with a third party present to review and document the performance as stated by the manager and employee. Frequently one will find that the two parties have emotionally colored views of what is going on and the presence of a third party will help to defuse the situation or at least cause things to calm down. Videotaping these sessions with either the manager or employee being able to get copies freely is another good idea. It helps to document what happened and more importantly makes both parties really think about what they're going to say and its effect before opening their mouths.
Are performance reviews going to get abolished? I would say they need to be and are antiquated methods of documenting an employee's performance. Realistically they won't go away because of general acceptance and understanding that employers have on what it is and now to use it. The bottom line is that if an employer and employee can't trust each other, it's better if they go their separate ways than to rely on performance appraisals to correct the situation.
