Stop Performance Appraisals

Workplace Management

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AImost every medium or large company does performance appraisals on their employee. And it is time to stop or drastically cut down this frustrating and often useless exercise. Performance reviews are broken. Managers hate them, fear them, and resent the terrible waste of their time. Employees also hate them, serve no purpose, and make them demotivated, cynical, and have no clear idea of how to improve. There is a lot of advice by management gurus on how to fix performance reviews but they would still be worse. Even if we could fix everything wrong with them, the fact that companies feel they have to evaluate every employee, again and again, shows that something is seriously broken in every workplace.

Here is a bunch of reasons why performance appraisals are a waste of time and why workplaces would be better off without them.

Nobody likes them - And nobody can do them well. Managers say performance appraisals as one of their most disliked tasks. Employees also dislike and distrust the process. Performance reviews are ideally supposed to give people feedback on their past performance and set goals for the future. This is impossible in the lengthy and complicated formats that HR departments have designed them. Studies show that when the manager or employee is stressed or in a bad mood both are not open to criticism and suggestions.