Ever Wonder How Albert Einstein Would Rank as an Employee?June 16th, 2008 |
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Recently, I tripped across a funny employee performance review for Albert Einstein, posted on Peter Norvig’s web page. I must say, reading it had me enjoy a few good laughs.
But I feel badly for poor Albert… I don’t think he was fairly assessed in this case. It sure doesn’t seem as though he was given all the tools needed to be a top performing employee?
Firstly, in the Job Description section, Dr. Haller chastises Albert for not sticking to his priorities, but then goes on to pass judgment on work that is technically not part of his job. The problem is, Haller never lists Albert’s duties and responsibilities - indicating the relative priority of each.
The second problem is that Albert’s performance appraisal doesn’t include any goals. I wonder - did they have a shared understanding of objectives for the year? There are criticisms about productivity and the timing of accomplishments, but no documentation about what the original expectations were.
The final issue with the employee performance appraisal is that Dr. Haller finishes the review with a comment about Albert’s wardrobe. How many times do we see these kinds of irrelevant and potentially hurtful comments in performance appraisals? What do his wardrobe coordination abilities have to do with his competence to process patent applications?
It seems to me this is a classic case of a very talented person who is not being managed for success.
Although this is clearly a satirical review meant to make us laugh, the sad thing is that many employees out there are still getting performance reviews that are not much better than this. The simple fact is that if we do a bad job of managing an employee’s performance, we miss the opportunity to benefit from their knowledge and talents.
Do you have any poorly managed Einstein’s working for you?
Tags: employee performance appraisal, HR, reviewsRelated posts
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