Putting an End to End-of-Year Reviews
Performance assessment can be more than 30 minutes of uncomfortable conversation followed by a raise.
From: Inc. Magazine| By: Scott Westcott
The only truly effective annual review may be the one Santa conducts on children, and even that rarely influences behavior for more than a month before the holidays. In the business world, human resources executives and line managers consider annual reviews largely a waste of time, according to a survey from OnPoint Consulting, a human resources firm based in New York City. Employees aren’t sold, either. A recent study by Salary.com found that more than 60 percent of workers doubt reviews boost performance. The criticisms are legion. Annual reviews fail to motivate people long term; assessments are often perfunctory; problem resolution gets postponed; and the ritual is painful for all concerned.In response, some CEOs are starting to rethink the process, emphasizing more frequent feedback and in-depth evaluations, says Steve Gross, who heads the performance and rewards consulting practice at Mercer Human Resource Consulting. “Employees want the feedback, and companies want a better sense of whether an employee is at risk of leaving,” Gross says.Here’s how two companies scrapped their blunt-instrument reviews and created in their place precision tools for performance management.
For the entire article go to Inc.com
There are good quality job reviews and bad quality job reviews. Corra thinks more job reviews are of the lesser variety than good ones. They are in some respects like grade school report cards. There are marks but not real insight. Think of all the classmate goof offs who made their marks in history or simply made a lot of money.
Small wonder that most employees believe the evaluations do little to boost performance. Back in high school, how many kids picked up their learning skills because of a lousy report card? So there may be some truth there.
The thing is, while conducting these evaluations, does your company also conduct updated background checks on its current employees? Sure, they may have pre-employment screening in place for job candidates. But what about the current people? What have they been up to lately?
Have they been out drinking and driving and therefore have accumulated a few DUI’s? For that matter, do they still have a driver’s license? How’s their credit. Have they been in jail lately? Good questions, but no answers.
So run criminal checks periodically, along with the MVR Driving Report and the Credit Check. You may be in for a few surprises. But by taken action early, you may avert costly litigation issues and a whole lot of company embarrassment, to say nothing of possible physical injury to your other employees.
Check them out before and even after you hire. It’s good sense.
