Generally, the company comes up with a few 'traits' that you get rated against. They explain that they came up with these traits with some statement similar to this:
"We did a survey of top successful people both inside and outside this organization. We have found many traits that these successful people had in common, so those are the traits you will be rated against."Okay, I have a problem with this statement. First, the purpose of a performance review is to determine how successful you are. I mean, that is the bottom line, right?
So to determine how successful you are, they evaluate you based on the traits of successful people. Let me ask you this question: How do you know the people you surveyed...were successful? How did you measure that?
Why then, are we not being measured by the same standard of success that got these people to take this survey anyway? Why develop a list of traits that are either generic or irrelevant? If 'honesty' is a trait that matters, wouldn't dishonest people tick 'honesty' in the survey anyway?
Also, were all these people in my job specialization, or were they all sales people, doctors, and car mechanics?
I mean I'll bet some traits are more important than others for each person's individual job title. My job requires absolutely zero customer interaction. I interact with DBAs, QA people, peers and management, but no customers at all. Ever.
Thus, a trait of high quality customer service is pretty moot one for me, wouldn't you say? I mean, it certainly doesn't hurt me to have it, but it doesn't help me be successful in my job nearly as much as it would to say...a receptionist or a helpdesk support person.
Or to give another example, being creative isn't really a big plus when you are dealing with Financial Systems. I mean hey, there were some big accounting people at Enron who got pretty "creative" with their Financials and I wouldn't call those folks "successful". And yet, if you are an Art Director...I'd imagine creativity being pretty important.
Anyway, my point is that any traits designed to measure every person in any given company are going to wind up being either too generic to be meaningful or so specific as to make them largely irrelevant to a large subset of the workforce.
Another stupidity that I hear a lot is this (though thankfully, this is not every company):
"Don't worry, the performance review is not directly tied to compensation"My question: "Why the hell not?".
So basically what you are saying is not matter how good or bad I do my job, I go in the same pool as all the other people and we all get a seperate system for determining compensation. A system where a manager (or director...VP...whatever) assigns who gets what in terms of raises and bonus...which will almost always still be tied to performance, but not to your review (meaning you get absolutely no input at all into the process...).
How disappointing.
Here is my dream performance review process:
1) Manager presents you with a list of goals they want you to fufill over the next year.
2) At the end of the year you get graded on the goals you accomplished (or didn't accomplish).
3) Raises/Bonuses are divided based on the outcome of #2.
That. is. it. The end. No more writing up a paragraph on how you demonstrated each of the 5 'leadership skills' that the CEO came up with while high on qualudes at a management retreat three years ago (and of course spells out into a clever acronym).
Also, you will notice that this process requires very little interaction by the employee. You of course, will go over the goals set by your manager. Your manager will have to include you in the discussions based around how you will be graded at the end of the year. Mostly tho, the grades should be no surprise at all if the manager is doing their job and keeping up dialog on the goals in the 1 on 1 meetings.
But basically, come performance review time...you have basically 5-10 minutes worth of paperwork time.
It will never work out that way because HR people apparently have to justify their existence. This time is time that people that could be actually working, are instead writing a couple paragraphs on how they demonstrated "trustworthiness" over the past year. And of course, ranting about how stupid this crap is on the internet.
Blah...back to explaining how "accountable" I was in the past year.... /vomit.