http://online.wsj.com/article/
This editorial was written by a UCLA Anderson business professor, and maybe you've already dealt with these issues. In my research field and company department, performance reviews aren't really a big deal because managers don't really take management seriously, promotions are so infrequent, and pay is more determined by experience rather than performance. So that is partially why I should probably change careers. What are your experiences? If some of you manage people, how do you feel about evaluating your team at same time as being evaluated by your superior? What's your take on the merits and BS of the exercise?
I guess my take on his comments is that the process is inefficient because each party is concerned with self-interest over honesty, and the process becomes more about asserting authority and dictating conditions, conforming to over-general company standards rather than attributes that make one successful in one's specific role, and ass-covering rather than truly improving performance for the company's benefit. Plus, I'm sure 90% of workers can provide anecdotes how their companies do not reward or estimate performance fairly. Also, perf. evals. can deteriorate into an eval. of the employee's ability to get along with his/her manager (which is part of being a good worker but not the whole story), not actual job performance. This erodes the critical manager-subordinate trust relationship and diminishes productivity in the long run.
The subordinate is trying to excuse away, pay lip-service to, or hide any failings, in order to get more pay and title. We all want to survive and promote ourselves. But this may give the manager the wrong impression of that person, and set him/her on a career path that he/she may not be happy with or ready to handle (I can attest to this, as some of my deception to make myself look better during a recent perf. eval. backfired, and led me to get new job duties that I absolutely loathe). Or if the manager and subordinate disagree on the subordinate's performance, that can also be a recipe for trouble (manager: he must think I'm stupid to disagree with all these points I worked hard to make), and another ding on their performance ("not accepting criticism", "defensive/combative", etc.). I know life isn't fair, but it's tough for a manager to rate you with incomplete information, and it's tough to endure a one-way barrage of criticism without looking like an excuse man to explain your faults. What if you struggled on a project while going through a divorce or family illness that you may not feel comfortable to share with your manager? And even if you do share, the manager may write the info off as save-assing, or put a black mark on your file ("'personal problems").
Maybe your company employs "360 feedback" where other coworkers rate you and factor into your overall eval. Well each of those people may have their own agendas, biases, and subjective impressions of your abilities from brief encounters, so how is that helping the manager? If the employee is permitted to choose reviewers, that also paints a skewed picture of performance. Plus the manager is probably not obligated to take their comments into official consideration, so if your boss doesn't like you but your 360 reviewers gave you high marks, your boss may ignore or overrule them. If the subordinate is brutally honest and self-critical, then the manager has no choice but to give a harsher evaluation, so the employee gets punished for being truthful when peers weren't, and will therefore enjoy less career development and maybe even risk job security. There's no incentive to improve in areas that the boss isn't already aware of, because that would be admitting faults.
The manager is basically just a messenger relaying news of performance incentive compensation that was predetermined by his/her superiors. And he/she may be put in an awkward position to justify a crappy raise to a highly valued worker, due to corporate forces outside of both of them. So from the subordinate's view, this either erodes morale in the company, or faith in the manager, and definitely undermines the legitimacy of the perf. eval. Plus I don't think there's much in it for the manager. He/she is not really punished for having sub-par workers who fail to improve, nor rewarded for turning around a struggling worker. The manager has the incentive to demonstrate to superiors that his/her group is kicking butt and problem-free, so it may be more convenient to jettison a problem worker than actually manage him/her into improvement, if possible.
Since the manager-subordinate relationship is so critical for the subordinate's career growth, the subordinate is almost forced to be dishonest in order to stay in the manager's good graces. And if the manager is not doing a good job (which in turn makes it look like his/her subordinates are failing too, and managers can easily pass the buck), the subordinate has no real channel of criticism recompense. Sure, your next-level boss may ask you to evaluate your boss at times, but that is a booby trap. If you deliver honest critiques (especially in writing), your manager may end up finding out, and it's not hard for him/her to guess who said it. And then it just becomes a game of he-said-she-said, with upper management more likely to side with your boss over you, since they have more invested in your boss, you are easier to replace, and what does this kid know about management anyway? So again, you are almost forced to lie and say everything is hunky-dory (I have had this experience). Maybe workers would even want to lie, because nothing good can come from your boss being under the gun, except if he/she gets fired or quits, which can be a long waiting game and no guarantee that the replacement will be better. A boss under fire is even more pressured to be a dick and work his/her people to death to look like things are turning around. On the other hand, if your boss' star is on the rise, you may get lucky and hitch a ride. So again, it's a totally disingenuous process. Maybe this is all obvious and just a feature of working. I'm sure many good managers hate the status quo but feel stuck with it, since they too could be punished for "insubordination", and any complaints could be viewed as a challenge to the higher-ups that developed/endorsed the system.
Many management scientists are working on this problem, and how to squeeze the most performance/motivation out of workers while making them happier. I like the writer's solution of a forward-thinking performance preview, instead of a review that feels more like getting sent to the principal's office. Maybe we all have to be more like contract workers to get a fairer shake. Working with your boss, if you reasonably accomplish A, B, and C, and improve D and E, then you are entitled to X perks at the end of the year. No more, "I really tried to fight for you, but the company is tightening its belt." Everything is in the open, and the manager-subordinate team now have their stakes aligned. And maybe subordinates should be entitled to see the performance previews of their managers too, in order to see where they stand and hold the manager accountable from below. If 360 feedback is used, the reviewers should be chosen randomly and must get reviewed by that person in turn. Of course the labor market would work much more efficiently if more information was transparent, like salaries, but it's not going to happen. Though if somehow parts of perf. evals. could be accessible company-wide, workers could also see how they stack up vs. peers and how their goals and performance affect larger organizations. When the manager-subordinate relationship is too closed off and in the dark, it makes it easier for the manager to abuse his/her position. And with more info in the open, the manager is better protected against accusations of unfairness or mismanagement, so everyone wins, except for dictator micromanagers.
The article synopsis:
- The Promise: Performance reviews are supposed to provide an objective evaluation that helps determine pay and lets employees know where they can do better.
- The Problems: That's not most people's experience with performance reviews. Inevitably reviews are political and subjective, and create schisms in boss-employee relationships. The link between pay and performance is tenuous at best. And the notion of objectivity is absurd; people who switch jobs often get much different evaluations from their new bosses.
- The Solution: Performance previews instead of reviews. In contrast to one-side-accountable reviews, performance previews are reciprocally accountable discussions about how boss and employee are going to work together even more effectively than they did in the past. Previews weld fates together. The boss's skin is now in the game.
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