Comments on: Stop Doing Annual Reviews http://akfpartners.com/techblog/2010/02/24/stop-doing-annual-reviews/ The Scalability Blog Sun, 27 Nov 2011 04:02:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Wabb http://akfpartners.com/techblog/2010/02/24/stop-doing-annual-reviews/#comment-221 Wabb Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:09:35 +0000 http://akfpartners.com/techblog/?p=662#comment-221 Fish has great points in this article. I'll add one more viewpoint. Just consider the futility of most annual review processes. Very often they are coupled with merit increases or bonus payouts and as a result everyone is focused on the money rather than the coaching aspect of the review. By performing more frequent reviews and moving away from an annualized process the manager can give more timely and actionable feedback. Gone is the wasted time of trying to remember accomplishments from 11.5 months ago. If done monthly, progress can be discussed in a semi-formal basis. Feedback (ideally on a 5 to 1 or 7 to 1 good to bad basis) can be given in time to help correct behavior or reward success. Perhaps more importantly, the merit increase evaluation can happen on its own, allowing employees to focus on performance 11 times out of 12 meetings rather than on the monetary implication during the one scheduled performance discussion. Fish has great points in this article. I’ll add one more viewpoint. Just consider the futility of most annual review processes. Very often they are coupled with merit increases or bonus payouts and as a result everyone is focused on the money rather than the coaching aspect of the review.

By performing more frequent reviews and moving away from an annualized process the manager can give more timely and actionable feedback. Gone is the wasted time of trying to remember accomplishments from 11.5 months ago. If done monthly, progress can be discussed in a semi-formal basis. Feedback (ideally on a 5 to 1 or 7 to 1 good to bad basis) can be given in time to help correct behavior or reward success.

Perhaps more importantly, the merit increase evaluation can happen on its own, allowing employees to focus on performance 11 times out of 12 meetings rather than on the monetary implication during the one scheduled performance discussion.

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