Performance Reviews Get Failing Marks

For years, the corporate world relied on the annual performance review as the foundation for their performance management program. Once a year a manager would meet with their direct reports and give them an evaluation of how they were performing on their jobs. It may have worked once upon a time. But look at the marks this process gets now from performance management training research:

•  A survey in the 1990s reported that only 30% of employees felt that the annual performance review actually helped improve performance
•  In 2007, only 1 out of 20 organizations gave their review process a top grade.
•  While over half of today’s companies still review their workers’ performance annually, less than half of the practitioners felt the reviews were a good measure of performance.

Something needs to change.

      The trend is toward less formal and more frequent evaluations. This requires that managers are more “hands-on” and that they are skilled at setting clear performance targets and giving feedback in a constructive way. Managers need to become good at observing their team and consistently coaching toward improved performance.