Why Performance Reviews Stink -- and How to Fix Them

Performance reviews have been getting some bad press over the last few years, and much of it is deserved. The general criticism is that everybody hates them and they don't do any good. I'm good with that.

But it still leaves the question of what to do instead. Are we to leave employees with no guidance? Promote people on personality alone? Probably not, although it could be argued that those are the general practices in many, if not most, companies. Instead, consider these performance review remedies:

• Start measuring what really matters. Online shoe retailer Zappos stopped measuring employees against benchmarks, such as how well they met deadlines or got to meetings on time, and started looking at how well they conformed to cultural values such as delivering "wow" service and showing humility, reports Rita Pyrillis over at Workforce.com (free registration required). The company uses the results not to determine raises and promotions, but to guide employees toward self-improvement classes to, for instance, help them give better service.
• Stop dreading them. Employees pick up on your sense of anxiety and dislike (perhaps much the same way dogs can smell fear). Instead of viewing performance reviews as an unpleasant task, Workforce.com recommends treating them as a ready-made opportunity to give constructive feedback, mentor, and guide employees.
• Keep them short. Shorter, less formal reviews can increase employee engagement, especially when you're dealing with younger workers, says Jeanne Meister, co-founder of New York City-based talent management consulting firm Future Workplace. To some extent, reviews can even substitute for raises and promotions. "There may be a gap between what young people want and the organization's ability to promote them at rate some people are looking for," Meister says. "More frequent and shorter reviews can be a way to engage and develop employees."
• Do them more often. Annual reviews might have been OK back when we communicated by postal mail. Not so when texting, Skype, videoconferencing, and tweets make exchanges of information almost instantaneous. It's time for reviews to recognize the increased speed of communication. "In an immediate world, who wants to wait a year for a performance review," notes Meister. "It's totally out of touch with the way we live our lives today."

Mark Henricks is an Austin, Texas, freelance journalist whose reporting on business, technology and other topics has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and other leading publications. Learn more about him at The Article Authority. Follow him on Twitter @bizmyths.