How to Do Performance Reviews Well July 15th, 2010

Heather McCulligh

I just read a terrific blog post over at Harvard Business Review that I wanted to share with you. It’s called Ditch Performance Reviews? How About Learn to do Them Well?

The authors, Maxim Sytch and D.Scott DeRue, Assistant Professors at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, identify what their research has shown to be the common challenges managers and employees need to address:

1. Cognitive bias
2. Sugarcoating the negative
3. Lack of preparation

They then go on to identify the four key things we need to do to make employee performance reviews effective:

1. Create an open, two-way dialogue
2. Reduce the subjectivity
3. Give constant feedback
4. Balance evaluation and development

The blog article is short and well worth the read. The ideas aren’t really new to me, but they’re put very succinctly and practically.

Now I’m not saying any of these challenges or actions are easy to do, but their research and others’ tell us that employee performance reviews done well can have a strong positive influence on employee performance as well as organizational performance. Isn’t it worth it to give everyone in your organization the training, tools and support they need to support high performance?

Tags: employee performance reviews