Performance reviews are often miserable on both sides. Few professionals enjoy the preparation, paperwork, and conversation that needs to happen.
Employees can feel like it is an exercise in futility. They create vague goals around things they don’t care about and then struggle to fit outcomes from the prior year into categories that HR makes up to demonstrate they made progress toward – or achieved – those goals.
Managers struggle with having difficult conversations when they are needed. They consider the right way to give constructive feedback for improvement.
Or, they may have to tell their star performers that there is no money for raises, knowing that these people will be frustrated and may start looking for a new opportity elsewhere.
Basically, performance reviews are a necessary evil and are frequently done poorly. Good employees can feel sandbagged, as this very short video shows.
DId you cringe when you watched this? I did. And so did several other people when I posted it on social media. Why? Because it had happened to them.
In a previous role, I was hired at the wrong level. Throughout the process, I was interviewing for a manager-level role. At the last minute, the company offered me a title demotion, while meeting my salary demands, because they hired someone else at that level. They assured me that it would be to my benefit over time because I could exceed expectations for the role and receive a good performance review and additional compensation after the first year.
I had to take the job and I did well. The teams I supported liked me and gave me excellent feedback on our work together. Like Veronika above, I came to my performance review with a folder of printed emails. My manager fed me the exact line that nobody gets a 5. I was told they had high expectations for me and I had just met expectations, not exceeded them.
I was furious and completely lost my sh-t. I was screaming at my manager, saying this was not going to stand, that she had completely lied to me about everything, and that I was going to file a complaint with her manager and HR.
I did all of that and got nowhere. Nothing changed.
Flash forward one year and I was still in the same job because I had been able to negotiate a 70% workload and did not have to work myself to death like some of my colleagues. It was a pilot program and I was one of the guinea pigs. Nobody expected this job could be done with those parameters, but with good relationships and strong communication skills, I was able to meet and exceed expectations – again.
I had a new boss who was a kind and extremely knowledgeable man. He was supportive and helpful. And while I could have dreaded my next performance review with him, I did not. In fact, I almost forgot about it until my calendar sent me a notification.
We had a calm and structured conversation. He congratulated me for making the situation work well. He suggested some ways I could improve that were helpful and made sense. He told me his hands were tied regarding promotions and raises, which I already knew. It was a non-event because we had built trust and had check-ins throughout the year.
What a difference.
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
