Performance Appraisals - Yeah or Nay?

From Holly Jones at the Legal Review: Skepticism about appraisals is not unusual. A Google search on performance appraisals will return numerous articles calling for the death of the performance review, a defunct management ritual that is merely a sign of stale leadership and a lack of innovation in HR practices. Various surveys report that 98 percent of employees dread them, 14 percent of employers don’t even have them (and even among those employers that do, 12 percent of employees still don’t receive feedback), and more than half of employees who do receive evaluations believe that the results are not fair or accurate. Yahoo's use of ranking, the so-called "Rank and Yank" is an even less accurate performance system for most companies. Especially in Silicon Valley, the manager has the answer at the start - somebody has to be on the bottom, and each manager is using (for the most part) his/her individual standards for performance. My take is that most organizations do a miserable job of performance appraisals. They often miss the key component of success : The CONVERSATION between employee and manager! That's what the system hinges on - the accuracy and openness of the conversation. That's my 2 cents. Send me a comment if you like.

Best blog by an attorney

Great points here in Diana Maier's latest blog: http://dianamaierlaw.com/lost-art-of-praise-workplace/ It's so easy to forget the basics of human interaction - and it's so necessary that we not do that, especially in the workplace. The best performance management systems provide ongoing feedback, rather than being a once a year event. Getting managers to provide ongoing, crisp, clear feedback on performance is the BEST way to avoid performance problems. And it's also the best way to avoid having to use an employment attorney.