Performance Reviews
It's almost the end of the year, and performance reviews for many companies are just around the corner. This will be the first time for me sitting on the other side of a performance review. I'm excited, and to be honest, a little nervous about how it will all play out. I know our HR manager has done an excellent job putting together our initial take on performance reviews, but it's still going to be up to me to ensure that all aspects of a performance review are communicated properly to my team. It's definitely going to be an interesting time of year!
I've started doing a little bit of reading on performance reviews. From what I can tell, the general consensus is that most performance review systems are flawed and nobody knows the perfect way to do them. That's kind of scary actually. So, like anything, I started questioning all the aspects of performance reviews that I can think of. So things like: What's stack ranking? Why do companies stack rank? What are alternatives? What about leveraging teammate-driven reviews? etc... There's a whole lot for me to learn, so I need to start by questioning everything.
With that said, how do you do performance reviews? Have performance reviews been working at your organization? Do you stick to "the norm", or do you have your own interesting spin on performance reviews that make them effective for your organization?
Articles
- Employee retention is not just about pizza lunches and parties: On the surface, things like candy stashes, catered lunch, and all other shiny perks seem like a great way to get and keep employees. However, keeping employees engaged is the sum of what attracts them to the company and what keeps them motivated while they're working. Recognizing their accomplishments and giving them challenging and meaningful work is an awesome start.
- 7 Reasons Your Coworkers Hate You: The truth? You probably know at least one person at work who does at least one of the things on this list. The harder truth? You probably do one of these yourself. It's a pretty cool list put together by Ilya Pozin. I'd suggest a quick look!
- How To Inspire Your Team on a Daily Basis: In this article by James Caan, he echoes one of the things I wrote about recently. You can't expect to have a motivated team unless you lead by example. You really shouldn't expect anything from your tea unless you are going the lengths to demonstrate that your dedication to the team and the team's goal.
- humility = high performance and effective leadership: Michelle Smith write about how humility is actually a great leadership characteristic. A couple of the top points in her article include not trying to obtain your own publicity and acknowledge the things you don't know. The most important, in my opinion, is promoting a spirit of service. You lead because you are trying to provide the team guidance and ensure every team member can work effectively.
- The Surprising Reason To Set Extremely Short Deadlines: This one might not be the same for all people. I think that anyone that tries to apply this as a blanket statement is probably setting themselves up for failure. How do you feel about short deadlines? Some people tend to work really well under pressure and having short deadlines. For those that do, this article offers a perspective on why. Under pressure, you operate creatively given your restricted set of resources, and you don't have time to dawdle and let things veer of track. Interesting to read.
- Eliciting the Truth: Team Culture Surveys: Gary Swart talks about something I think is extremely important for all businesses. Maybe your work culture is established, but where did it come from? It's easy for people to get together in a room and say "we want to have a culture that looks like X". It's harder to actually have the culture you say you want. Gary suggests you do a culture survey to actually see what your work culture is like because... well, who knows better? A few people sitting together in a room, or everyone in the company?
- You Are Not a Number: With year-end performance reviews and the like coming up, I thought it would be interesting to share this short article by Dara Khosrowshahi. Do you stick to stack ranking? Do you have in-depth conversations with employees about their performance? Have you tried switching things up because the canned approach just wasn't delivering?
- Which Leads to More Success, Reward or Encouragement?: Deepak Chopra analyzes the positives and negatives of using rewards and using encouragement as a means of driving success. The takeaway from Deepak's article is that using rewards is not a sustainable means to motivate your team, and actually tends to create separation within the team. By leveraging encouragement, you can empower your team to work together and self-motivate.
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