Recruiting

Can We Abandon the Performance Review?

We’re in the midst of a revolution, where more than one-third of U.S. companies are replacing traditional annual performance reviews. Companies like Adobe®, Microsoft®, IBM, Deloitte, Dell, General Electric have opted for informal, regular check-ins between employees and their managers.

There are several things to consider before you ditch “check-the-box” performance management processes, but many companies are finding success with increasing the frequency of performance discussions, eliminating ratings and replacing them with adjectives, and, in many cases, eliminating the process altogether.

Are you looking to drive organizational growth and transform your talent? Learn how to become an HR Agent of Change when you attend BLR’s THRIVE event, held May 11-12 in Las Vegas, learn more below.

HR Daily Advisor looked at this issue a few times last year, examining trends and best practices surrounding performance reviews:
Problems with Performance Appraisals: Reviews can be inaccurate, expensive, and can actually hinder real-time feedback. Should you get rid of appraisals altogether, or can you solve these problems by revamping your process?
Should the Performance Review Go the Way of the Dodo? Do performance reviews help employers? What about employees? Do they boost performance, or is there something else going on? IBM and others have decided that formal reviews have outlived their usefulness as HR becomes more data-oriented, and systems for evaluating an employee’s contribution become layered and complex.
Why It’s Time to Replace the Performance Review: Whether or not your organization is prepared to simplify its employee evaluation process, the evolution is already in progress. Stacked ranking systems and time-sucking forms will soon go the way of fax machines and pagers. In their place will be a simpler system of frequent feedback and productive dialog that is supported by technology instead of dictated solely by algorithms.
Offering an update on this year’s trends, Natasha Bowman, J.D., SPHR, of White Plains Hospital and Performance ReNEW will present Performance Management Reloaded: Ditching Appraisals in Favor of Revolutionary Ways to Reinforce Positive Employee Behaviors at BLR’s upcoming THRIVE conference, being held May 11-12 in Las Vegas.
THRIVE’s 2017 conference brings HR professionals together with the most influential thought leaders in the country to have productive, progressive conversations around how to drive organizational growth and talent transformation through human capital management. Learn more at thrivelive.blr.com.

1 thought on “Can We Abandon the Performance Review?”

  1. The HBR article about GE’s new approach to performance reviews did not say they abandoned the year end review. They are placing far more emphasis on coaching and frequent feedback through out the year but it stated explicitly they are still rating their employees. Their new approach is a radical change from the disastrous forced distribution.
    Every employer has a need to identify its stars and the few performing at unacceptable levels — and the latter better be fully documented.
    Perhaps the most important issue is that converting managers into effective coaches benefits everyone.

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