Ticking boxes yearly process

Officially it’s called Performance Year Review, unofficially it’s most of all an administrative process which consists of trying to understand which boxes have been ticked along the year.
It’s quite a common organizational practice this days to implement performance management processes within the organization which ideally will help the employees grow, think about their own careers and reward those that have outperformed their peers.

Definitely has been quite an improving process along the years, and it’s way better than having nothing in place. But still, every time most people think about the performance year, they see it as a administrative process most of all: speak with people, populate a bunch of forms, put some objectives and in 1 year’s time get some feedback from the line managers. But why does it sound people aren’t getting motivated?
It’s the ticking the boxes… the one size fits all syndrome.

Well because it doesn’t, there should be more tools in place so that flexible adjustments can be made. For sure the peers need to be aligned and comparable, but what about during the rest of the year? It needs to be more an interactive process I would say:

* Define short term project objectives & long term ones (which should include personal goals) – after all self performance is important too

* Define steps to get there

* Regular catch ups with the line manager to assess and maybe review the objectives
Once project | objective is done close them and start a new cycle.

It doesn’t need to be all that formal, but at least the conversations should be happening. But wait, conversation means listening and I know it’s very tempting to get behind the huge to do lists and not speak with your employees. Mr Boss I can tell you you’re not doing your job! You should be making sure there’s regular conversations, that your team has what they need, either it’s more time, more coaching or more freedom to do what they have in mind. But if you don’t talk you won’t know will you?

There’s a big chance that if this process was happening and there was enough feedback along the year, maybe the results year end would be better understood and potentially perceived as fair. The worst thing that can happen is something like:

“Mr B. you’ve achieved a rate of Consistent with your peers”

“But I’ve done a lot of work and received very positive feedback from our clients. What was missing then?”

“You forgot to tick box 45, which says you should be doing more internal powerpoints to support the sales process”

Mr B sobs and goes away… “If only I had known….”

Note: This is not at all scientific, it’s all based on my personal opinion – it’s a blog anyway! I’m sure there’s loads of studies in the topic if you want something with more ground work.