Anyone who manages people and has been awake and alert for the past couple of years knows this to be true — no one seems to like performance reviews or performance management.
Even people who say they do it well also admit in the same breath that they struggle with it, and for most managers and executives, they would probably just like to see it go away altogether.
Yes, most everyone really hates performance management. And new research from i4cp gives a better sense why.
Here are the highlights of their research:
These are poor numbers no matter how you slice them, although i4cp believes that they aren’t as negative as some (like me) may view them. As Cliff Stevenson says in a i4cp Trend Watcher blog post that analyzes the survey:
These trends should not be taken as negative indicators. The interest level in performance management is very high among C-level executives, and with the advent of Millennials joining the workforce and continuing globalization, finding ways to monitor and improve and develop performance is a useful and highly sought-after capability. Although changes to PM have been incremental, they have also been thoughtful and forward-looking, and the people who are involved in this field can rest assured that things are getting better. Slowly.”
Cliff Stevenson has spent a lot more time with the survey findings than I have, so I have to take his word for it when he says this isn’t as big a knock on performance management as it seems. But, he also says this:
Despite a relatively short history, performance management has become so synonymous with compensation that separating the two is anathema to most established organizations. With only a few case studies of companies that have gone ratingless (four are available to i4cp members), most organizations are waiting until the bandwagon is firmly established before jumping aboard.
The good news for those organizations that are thinking of moving to a performance management system without ratings — those organizations that have done so such as Expedia, REI, Adobe, and Juniper Networks — have done so successfully. In fact, all four of those organizations have seen increases in either bottom line revenue or employee engagement, or sometimes both.
The bad news is that performance management is still directly linked to compensation at most companies. Of the surveyed respondents, 73 percent said their organizations’ primary use of PM is to support compensation decisions — virtually unchanged from 2006, when 72 percent responded with the same answer. As long as compensation management and performance management remain linked, it is very unlikely that we will see fundamental changes in the core concepts of performance management.”
I get that performance management suffers from being too closely tied to compensation, but the bigger issue is that the PM process is clunky and difficult in far too many organizations.
Despite all the wonderful performance management software and systems I see at HR Tech — and just about every tech company has one — not enough organizations have invested in them. I keep hearing that only 20 percent of organizations have bought such a system (and I would love if anyone has better numbers on that) but it makes me wonder: why don’t more organizations invest in modern performance management software that would make handling reviews and feedback a whole lot better and easier?
As a veteran manager who struggled mightily with paper forms and the once-a-year hell that the performance review process is known for, I keep telling myself — there has to be a better way.
And there is. Performance management systems are slick, easy to use, and can help managers give, and employees get, continuous, real-time feedback on how they are doing and what they need to do to improve.
I know these system are out there. I’ve seen them.
But just as American business isn’t investing much in hiring or their workforce, they also aren’t spending the money to improve how they handle performance management.
That’s why the cycle continues, with everyone hating performance management and believing they don’t do it well despite making it a key part of how they evaluate their talent.
This is what I get from the i4cp research, and it frankly, it gets old. The tools exist to make performance management a lot more effective — we just need to spend invest in them.
Of course, there’s more than the latest on performance management the news this week. Here are some HR and workplace-related items you may have missed. This is TLNT’s weekly round-up of news, trends, and insights from the world of talent management. I do it so you don’t have to.
