When your organisation’s performance reviews aren’t working

If you manage people, there’s a fair chance you’ve been handed a performance review process you don’t really believe in. It’s once a year. The form asks about competencies nobody can define. The ratings feel decided before the conversation starts. And when it’s all over, very little changes.

You probably can’t fix that on your own, at least not this year. But your team doesn’t have to wait for the organisation to catch up. You can give them the honest, regular, useful feedback the official process isn’t giving them, without fighting it. That’s what this guide is about.

Signs your organisation’s reviews aren’t working

Every organisation is different, but these are the signs I’d look for in my own team:

• ✓
  People are surprised by what they hear in their review.
• ✓
  The only view in the review is the manager’s.
• ✓
  Reviews get written in a rush the week before the deadline.
• ✓
  Ratings are so tied to pay that nobody says anything honest.
• ✓
  Nobody can remember what they agreed to work on last time.
• ✓
  People talk about the review as something to get through, not something useful.

If a few of those sound familiar, the problem usually isn’t that your people don’t want feedback. It’s that the process isn’t built to give them any they can use.

What’s in your control, and what isn’t

It’s easy to feel stuck, so it helps to be honest about where your influence ends. You probably can’t change the review cycle, the rating scale, the forms, or how pay is decided. You can usually change how often your team gets feedback, who it comes from, what it’s about, and what happens afterwards. That’s a lot more than it sounds.

• Instead ofOne big review a year.
  →
  TryA short 360 for each person a couple of times a year.
• Instead ofOnly the manager’s view.
  →
  TryAnonymous feedback from the teammates who see their work every day.
• Instead ofGeneric competencies.
  →
  TryWhether people trust them with their actual responsibilities.
• Instead ofFeedback the week before the deadline.
  →
  TryFeedback two or three months before, with time to act.
• Instead ofA rating and nothing else.
  →
  TryOne or two agreed actions, followed up in one-to-ones.

How to fill the gap without fighting the system

1. 1
   Tell your own manager what you’re doing. This isn’t a secret project. Explain that you want your team to get more regular feedback, and check whether your organisation has any rules about collecting it. Most managers will be glad someone is trying.
2. 2
   Go first. Run a review on yourself before anyone else. It shows your team you’ll hear the same kind of feedback you’re asking them to hear. Then thank them publicly and share a little of what you learnt.
3. 3
   Keep it separate from pay. Be clear with the team that this is for their growth, not for their rating. That promise is what makes the feedback honest.
4. 4
   Time it before the official review. Two or three months ahead gives people time to act on what they hear, so they walk into the official review with progress to show.
5. 5
   Follow up in one-to-ones. Agree one or two actions and come back to them. Feedback that goes nowhere teaches people to stop giving it.

What to ask

Keep it short and keep it about trust. I use five questions: two ratings (how often people trust the person to live your values, and to do each of their actual responsibilities), one about how often their engagement impresses, and two free-text questions about when they impressed people and when they could have helped more. There’s more detail in the guide to running a 360 peer review for a small team, and you can see the exact form on the example review.

Read before you share

When a summary comes in, read it before your team member does. Check that the feedback is fair and appropriate, and that you understand it well enough to talk about it. Usually it can be shared in full. If it’s particularly hard, share the most important, actionable parts, agree what to work on, and run another review in two or three months. You can see what a finished summary looks like on the example summary.

Change things from the bottom up

Organisations rarely change their review process because someone wrote a strongly worded email. They change when someone shows them something working. If your team starts to look forward to feedback rather than dread it, people will notice: your own manager, other managers, maybe HR.

When they ask, share what you did and what you learnt, including what didn’t work. You might not fix your organisation’s performance reviews. But you’ll have made them matter less to your team, because your team will already know how they’re doing.