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Performance Review 2.0: Eight Ways to Overhaul Your Employee Evaluation System (and Transform Your Culture in the Process)
Wondering if it's time to scrap the performance review charade? Don't throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water just yet. Quint Studer explains how to turn the old-fashioned (obsolete) performance review system into one that really, well, performs.
Gulf Breeze, FL — January 22, 2010 — Performance reviews get a bad rap these days. Employees dread them, vacillating between cynical eye-rolls and desperate last-minute bids to suck up to the boss before review time. Managers see them as an obligation to plow through before they can mark one more task off their endless to-do lists. But according to Quint Studer, performance reviews themselves aren't the problem — it's the way companies handle the review process that's flawed.
"Performance reviews are necessary," says Studer, author of the new book Straight A Leadership: Alignment, Action, Accountability
(Fire Starter Publishing, 2009). "And when they're done properly, people actually like them. I mean, employees want to know how they're doing. They want to connect with their managers. And reviews give leaders an opportunity to measure performance results, reward great employees, and move not-so-great ones up or out.
"That being said, many companies could stand to overhaul their performance review system," he adds. "Changing your approach will not only make your reviews more effective, it can have a positive impact on company culture."
So what can you do to make your performance reviews really count? Studer offers some guidelines:
Think of them as a process, not an event. Let's put the traditional performance review in context. It's "business as usual" all year: Employees go about their work, managers go about theirs, and never the twain shall meet. Then suddenly, once a year, they do meet. That one encounter is expected to yield a productive meeting of the minds, followed by growth and progress on the employee's part. It rarely works that way. The review is an aberration in the fabric of daily work life, so of course results are lackluster.
Leaders should be laying the groundwork for performance reviews all year long, says Studer. He recommends leaders practice weekly or even daily "rounding" for outcomes. In the same way that a doctor makes rounds to check on patients, a leader makes rounds to check on employees. The technique allows you and your managers to regularly touch base with employees, make personal connections, recognize success, find out what's going well and determine where improvements are needed.
"Rounding is not about tossing out a casual 'How are you?' and then walking off without waiting for an answer," says Studer. "It means asking specific questions in the right sequence: Do you have the tools and equipment you need to do the job? What is going well? What isn't going well? Is there anyone who's been particularly helpful to you that I should recognize? Always listen and write down your answers and then follow up — if you don't do this last part, it negates all your hard work.
"When you build your reviews on a foundation of rounding, they become meaningful," he adds. "They're the culmination of lots of mini-meetings. Neither party is surprised by what the other party says during the reviews because the issues have been raised before — probably more than once."
"Performance reviews are necessary," says Studer, author of the new book Straight A Leadership: Alignment, Action, Accountability
(Fire Starter Publishing, 2009). "And when they're done properly, people actually like them. I mean, employees want to know how they're doing. They want to connect with their managers. And reviews give leaders an opportunity to measure performance results, reward great employees, and move not-so-great ones up or out."That being said, many companies could stand to overhaul their performance review system," he adds. "Changing your approach will not only make your reviews more effective, it can have a positive impact on company culture."
So what can you do to make your performance reviews really count? Studer offers some guidelines:
Think of them as a process, not an event. Let's put the traditional performance review in context. It's "business as usual" all year: Employees go about their work, managers go about theirs, and never the twain shall meet. Then suddenly, once a year, they do meet. That one encounter is expected to yield a productive meeting of the minds, followed by growth and progress on the employee's part. It rarely works that way. The review is an aberration in the fabric of daily work life, so of course results are lackluster.
Leaders should be laying the groundwork for performance reviews all year long, says Studer. He recommends leaders practice weekly or even daily "rounding" for outcomes. In the same way that a doctor makes rounds to check on patients, a leader makes rounds to check on employees. The technique allows you and your managers to regularly touch base with employees, make personal connections, recognize success, find out what's going well and determine where improvements are needed.
"Rounding is not about tossing out a casual 'How are you?' and then walking off without waiting for an answer," says Studer. "It means asking specific questions in the right sequence: Do you have the tools and equipment you need to do the job? What is going well? What isn't going well? Is there anyone who's been particularly helpful to you that I should recognize? Always listen and write down your answers and then follow up — if you don't do this last part, it negates all your hard work.
"When you build your reviews on a foundation of rounding, they become meaningful," he adds. "They're the culmination of lots of mini-meetings. Neither party is surprised by what the other party says during the reviews because the issues have been raised before — probably more than once."
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