Annual Reviews - Final Thoughts

In talking with several people around the office about the low value of giving ratings during performance reviews, I realized there was yet another reasons they suck. Aside from the previous stated reasons of setting false expectations, they also focus employees self-improvement efforts into the wrong areas.

I think that a good leader encourages the most productivity from a team by planning and guiding work around each individual's strength. If you assign the quiet introspective super coder in the corner the job of external team communications, you are setting him/her, the team, and the project up for failure.

What does this have to do with ratings? Glad you asked. If you give a person any rating less than the highest, he/she will usually focus their efforts on improving the areas where they were the weakest. The mental calculus is simple - (Rating of GREAT + Rating of IMPROVE)/Overall Average Rating = Rating of GOOD. So they want to change the IMPROVE so that the resulting equation evaluates to GREAT.

But this doesn't help the individual, the team or the project. If they area needed to improve is drastic, then yes changes need to be made. But if the super coder starts spending his/her time trying to take on the persona of social hub rather than cranking out awesome code, then the manager has failed to get the most out of the team.

Responsibility

Who is responsible for the career development of employees? First and foremost of course, is the employees themselves. They know better than any manager their own goals, aspirations, motivations, and the hundreds of small details that factor into career decisions. They should be willing to communicate with their boss (who must be approachable, especially concerning topics this personal) about where they are, where they are going, and when and how they think they should be getting there.

However, it is also vitally important for a manager to be looking out for his team. For me, it is one of the most rewarding, and most profound, responsibilities, to have that much influence over someone's career and livelihood. It borders on managerial negligence to abdicate the responsibility of career development solely to the employee. A good manager will know what motivates individual team members, have a good general idea of the individuals personnel status (ready for promotion/raise/added responsibility) as well that individual's ability to handle any of the above.

Finally, a company's Human Resources/Personnel/Talent section should also be involved in ensuring that managers have all the information that they need to make informed and timely decisions. They should act as a safety net, double checking that managers have past performance reviews, pay data, market data, title and job descriptions for all employees as well as the title and job description for the next promotion level of all their employees. It does not matter that no one may be ready for a promotion or a raise, the managers need that information to do their job correctly, completely, and competently. Yes, it can be quite the workload to get and distribute all the necessary information, however it is well worth the effort. It is one of the main reasons a Talent organization exists within a company. A good manager and good Personnel personnel will work together towards ensuring no one slips through the organizational cracks.