I keep hearing that the Club for Growth is on Converse Chellis’ case for some raises given without performance reviews. I have no idea whether there is a problem there or not (I had trouble finding any elaboration, although I guess it’s out there somewhere).
But I do know this: In my experience (close to 30 years in management), performance reviews are THE biggest waste of time in corporate America. I have wasted YEARS of my life — late nights at the office because of the impossibility of getting this pointless crapola done during the regular working day because there’s actual WORK to do — filling out those blasted things, which sometimes go on for 10 pages or more, with essay question after essay question.
It made for a particularly vicious form of madness when I was a supervising editor in a newsroom and didn’t have a private office. Whenever you saw the metro editor or government editor or photo editor or whichever editor trying to hide in a dark corner of the newsroom at an odd hour, hunkered over a computer muttering, looking like he’d bite the head off anyone who bothered him, he was probably doing performance reviews.
Basically, I always sort of figured that if the employee didn’t know what I thought of the job he or she was doing, then somebody wasn’t paying attention, and probably would ignore the eval as well — because I’ve never been shy about telling people on the spot what I think about what they’re doing.
It particularly became absurd when I headed the editorial department, full of very senior people who usually worked out the kinks in their job performance years earlier, else they wouldn’t have gotten there. Sure, we all have flaws, but at that point in your career they’re pretty permanent, more in the nature of fundamental elements of one’s character. So you end up saying the same things year after year — he’s great at this, she’s not so great at that — and it looks like either you’re a lazy manager (failing to come up with fresh observations), or the employee is obstinately refusing to improve. When the truth of the matter is, the reason you’ve been employing the person all these years is that his or her good qualities far outweigh the bad.
I lessened the pain of doing the blasted things by inventing my own evaluation system, which I got away with in my last few years at the paper. Short and to the point: I’d list three strengths (no more than a line or two on each), three weaknesses, three accomplishments since the last review, and three goals for the coming year. And I’d have the employee do the same, and then we’d sit down and compare them, and come up with a synthesis for the official report. This didn’t take so long, but I still hated it.
Evaluations became even more onerous in recent years when, more often than not, there was no raise attached to them. At least it gave me an incentive to get them done at some point because I knew I was holding up the subject’s raise. With no raise attached, my only motivation was to end the nagging from HR. And I can take a LOT of nagging.
Anyway, all of this is to say that I was thrilled to read a review this morning (in the Club for Growth’s favorite newspaper, ironically enough) of a book entitled “GET RID OF THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW!” An excerpt:
This corporate sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities… How could something so obviously destructive, so universally despised, continue to plague our workplaces?
Amen to that. I don’t know anything about the authors, Samuel A. Culbert and Lawrence Rout, but as far as I’m concerned they are geniuses. Someone needs to give them a good review, and a nice raise…
Related Posts
Now think about how worthless they are for state employees. Excellent review… you keep your job; Good review… you keep your job; Poor review… you keep your job. If you really, really do your job poorly, you get put into “time out”, which means they take all of your responsibilities away, but you stay at your current pay rate. Many supervisor have all but stopped filling out performance reviews and planning statements for employees… because they’re smart enough to know it just doesn’t matter these days.
No raises for the last 5 years for most employees, the only chance state employees have of getting a raise is by job reclassification or moving to (or threatening to move to) another department. I know several people who applied and were offered jobs just to get a raise from their current department with no intentions of ever leaving. It has gotten to the point where in-house employees are interviewed but with no thought of ever making an offer even if they were the best qualified applicant.
Early in my big firm career, a more senior associate told me they only have two performance reviews: “You’re great” and “You’re fired.” I found that to be the case, across many individuals.
My dad, who worked at Savannah River Lab his whole career, came home truly annoyed–a rarity for him– because they had instituted “objective standards” for review. He determined that you could map every bad characteristic to a good characteristic, and which side you came out on was largely subjective–for example, you could be “flexible” or “indecisive.”
As to HR nagging, several have come to realize that the CEO’s and VP’s do not run many of the major companies any longer, HR runs the company.
Oh, yeah — they are the zampolits.
Yes, Michael P.–you point out one of the huge unfairnesses–the rewarding of potential ship-jumpers, while loyalty goes a-wanting.
Mr. Chellis has a much bigger problem to deal with:
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20100520/COLUMNISTS/5201003?p=1&tc=pg&tc=ar
He’s got a guy making $117K per year who is basically running his political campaign. No experience, lies to the press… all on the public dime.
Unfortunately, this goes on frequently in the elected offices in the state. 15 years ago, I did some software consulting for one of the top state offices in Columbia. The taxpayer “staff” of this elected official consisted of three people: one who was the “chief of staff” and did the heavy lifting for the job, another guy who was purely a political operative (and is now a radio talkshow host in Boston and a frequent guest on Fox), and a third very young guy who now is pretty well known political campaign guy in South Carolina. We see this now with the “spokesmen” who slide in from the campaigns into “consulting” roles paid for by taxpayers.
Good to see one member of the media actually going after this type of corruption.
Once, when an editor was yelling at me, he pointed out that my performance review had a negative citation. I was singled out in the staff as the person most annoyed with managers who were either lying or incompetant.
“Which am I?” he demanded.
I told him.
Alas, another black mark in my “permanent record.”
Here’s a description from The New York Times of the how the stress involved with these performance reviews negatively affects people’s health.
@Burl–That reminds me of one of my very first reviews–One of the partners had criticized me for not being willing to take a stand on things I didn’t know about (obviously I have corrected that flaw now). The senior partner scratched his head on that one and said he thought that was a good thing, not something worthy of criticism.
My brother, the ex-Philly Inq editor, is finding Vanguard a bit treacherous–the corporate culture is not quite the same as that of a newsroom. Newspaper people are rewarded, usually, for finding faults. Corporoids, not so much.
And when corporation-think takes over newsroom management, ey yi yi!
@Burl–Maybe newspapers could survive better, though….
I want Kathy Bates in her character from the office to take over the newspapers–Sabre’s The State!
Doug,
I agree! Chellis should go! In the link that you provided, Chellis is violating the HATCH ACT by campaigning at government expense for an elected position. That is a big No-No! He even has a few employees on staff, according to that article, that serve as campaign advisors to Chellis instead of doing a real job, like doing real work that the Treasurer’s office does.
Brad,
I don’t know if The State implemented “Peer Reviews” or not. But “Peer Reviews” provide an opportunity for coworkers to provide input to what should be a managerial function. “Peer Reviews” provide a method for other employees to anonymously attack the reviewee. Maybe they have an agenda to open a slot so their cousin can interview for the position.