Why eliminating the annual review caused a drop in performance

Deel van een artikel van Lydia Dishman, juni 2016 op fastcompany.com. Onderzoek van CEB geeft aan dat bij het stoppen van officiële beoordelingsgesprekken managers niet overgaan naar frequente informele performance gesprekken. Employee Engagement daalt hierdoor.

Ditching the dreaded annual review provided momentary euphoria, then a drop in engagement, performance, and communication.

A small but growing cohort of Fortune 500 companies made headlines recently when they broke with tradition and ditched the annual review.

Executives claimed performance reviews were often inefficient. Neuroscience backed them up. One study found that the dread filling employees prior to a review can restrict creativity. Another revealed that performance reviews foster a fixed mind-set in which the employee believes they’ll never be able to improve and achieve professional growth.

So it made sense to toss the annual review process. Leadership advisory firm CEB found that the number of Fortune 1000 companies eliminating the annual review increased to 12% in 2015 from 1% back in 2011.

But CEB subsequently found that getting rid of the review didn’t always reverse its restrictive effects. In fact, it proved to drop employee engagement and performance by 10%.

CEB’s researchers polled nearly 10,000 employees in 18 countries. Workers came from a variety of industries and organizational sizes. The researchers then compared outcomes and perceptions of those employees in organizations that use performance ratings to those in organizations without ratings. They also did a series of interviews with heads of HR to get a handle on trends and challenges for performance management.

CEB’s analysis also found:

  • Manager conversation quality declined by 14%
  • Managers spent less time on informal reviews conversations
  • Top performers’ satisfaction with pay differentiation decreased by 8%
  • Employee engagement dropped by 6%

The original push to remove reviews and their attendant ratings should have given managers more time to discuss performance rather than defend ratings. That didn’t always occur.

Lees het gehele artikel hier.