Your suggestions for a “Better Way” makes sense, and I wish more companies would adopt it.
Reviews every quarter are great, watching and celebrating your colleagues getting promoted every 6, 9, or 12 months in a company that has enough growth room to do that really changes your attitude about how you work. My early days at Salesforce were like this.
Here's a few more tips
* Take advantage of your new hires out of college
- They are new to the review process and may not be mentored on what’s expected so you don’t even have to give them the whole review. Give them half of it, the bit saying how great they are then make them sign it and if they come back a few weeks later with a slight paystub change give them the other half of the review if they start asking questions.
* Take advantage of your H1-B employees
- Did you know you can treat H1-B employees as second class citizens? See which country they originated from before you screw them over in the review because some of them may come from a more privileged country, be quite happy to return and will not sign the evaluation you’ve given them.
* Don’t tailor your feed back (See 3. Don't prepare)
- CTRL-C, CTRL-V is great tool. Make sure you’ve delivered your evaluation of the employee you don’t value or respect in such a way that the employee will be too embarrassed to talk about it to anyone. Make sure on a Friday afternoon. Cut and paste for the rest of the employees you don’t value and hope they don’t talk to each other.
Like you mentioned, many of us had to deal with some or all of the issues you mentioned. I will say there are some groups that experience this more frequently than others for no reason related to poor performance. Some of us got so traumatized on our first review we said never again. I feel this is why you have people not signing review evaluations, or always going to review meetings with 2 offers from other companies, or negotiating review scores before the managers go fight for you in the stack ranking.
When I got my first management job, it came with management training that included performance reviews. It was all about protecting the company's ass by keeping a documented paper trail and how to meet the required rating distribution.
Needless to say, my first year giving reviews did not go well. There was a corporate process I had to implement, but I had a lot more freedom on how to implement that process than I was taught.
I remember thinking "How would I implement this process if I actually cared about the employees and their career development?" I came up with a list much like yours in this article.
It's still a consequential discussion, and you can't remove all the anxiety, but thanks for sharing the better way!
Your suggestions for a “Better Way” makes sense, and I wish more companies would adopt it.
Reviews every quarter are great, watching and celebrating your colleagues getting promoted every 6, 9, or 12 months in a company that has enough growth room to do that really changes your attitude about how you work. My early days at Salesforce were like this.
Here's a few more tips
* Take advantage of your new hires out of college
- They are new to the review process and may not be mentored on what’s expected so you don’t even have to give them the whole review. Give them half of it, the bit saying how great they are then make them sign it and if they come back a few weeks later with a slight paystub change give them the other half of the review if they start asking questions.
* Take advantage of your H1-B employees
- Did you know you can treat H1-B employees as second class citizens? See which country they originated from before you screw them over in the review because some of them may come from a more privileged country, be quite happy to return and will not sign the evaluation you’ve given them.
* Don’t tailor your feed back (See 3. Don't prepare)
- CTRL-C, CTRL-V is great tool. Make sure you’ve delivered your evaluation of the employee you don’t value or respect in such a way that the employee will be too embarrassed to talk about it to anyone. Make sure on a Friday afternoon. Cut and paste for the rest of the employees you don’t value and hope they don’t talk to each other.
Like you mentioned, many of us had to deal with some or all of the issues you mentioned. I will say there are some groups that experience this more frequently than others for no reason related to poor performance. Some of us got so traumatized on our first review we said never again. I feel this is why you have people not signing review evaluations, or always going to review meetings with 2 offers from other companies, or negotiating review scores before the managers go fight for you in the stack ranking.
When I got my first management job, it came with management training that included performance reviews. It was all about protecting the company's ass by keeping a documented paper trail and how to meet the required rating distribution.
Needless to say, my first year giving reviews did not go well. There was a corporate process I had to implement, but I had a lot more freedom on how to implement that process than I was taught.
I remember thinking "How would I implement this process if I actually cared about the employees and their career development?" I came up with a list much like yours in this article.
It's still a consequential discussion, and you can't remove all the anxiety, but thanks for sharing the better way!