Performance Evaluations: "The GREAT EVIL"?: A Follow Up

My post on Performance Evaluations: "The Great Evil"? generated a fair amount of interest. I had asked in that post for people to participate in a small poll where I asked if performance appraisal needed to be eliminated, changed substantially, left alone or needed more training. Here are the results.

• To Be Eliminated 4 (19%)
• To Be Changed substantially 9 (42%)
• No Change, it Is fine the way it is 0 (0%)
• To include more training 8 (38%)

 As you can see, no one is happy with way it is. But not everyone is ready to get rid of it either. So what is the answer? Better yet, what are better questions? I am including one of the comments, from Andy Spence of Glassbead Consulting, where he asked a lot of questions. Read these. How would you respond to Andy's questions? BTW, Glassbead Consulting named this post one of the TOP 10 HR Transformation Articles of April.

 

Andy asks:

Good post and debate which raises some questions for me. Isn't the goal here to improve individual and team performance in line with organisation goals? Shouldn't line managers be monitoring and managing performance on a frequent basis anyway? Does the performance management process actually help organisations achieve this? Would the time, effort and cost better be spent on other 'performance improvement' activities such as manager training or online feedback tools like Rypple? I think we should assess each type of performance improvement activity on its own merits given the business context, capabilities (which are mentioned as a barrier) and goals etc.



 Answer Andy's questions by leaving comments down below. Thanks I am sure we will ALL be interested in your answers.