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The Great American Performance Review
We all know what a performance review is, or at least we know a good one from a bad one. It is that yearly (if you’re lucky) time when your manager is required by some obscure HR person to fill out a lengthy, often multi-page form that essentially says one of three things: You are great. You are ok. You stink (usually followed by “You’re fired” in 90 days or less).
Most managers hate this process because it requires them to evaluate you on what you have done, honestly and candidly, usually scoring you on a scale similar to a movie review. (One to five stars anyone?) Usually when you get a “1,” it means big trouble for you over the next year. A “5” means you are a rock star worthy of your boss’s job. Usually most managers hate confrontation so they score everyone at a 3.5 which means you are a hint above average and you won’t argue the score. This means the manager sleeps well at night, you keep your job, and HR groans because a bunch of crappy employees will remain with the company. But those kinds of managers are really doing a great disservice to the company because mediocre (and often bad) employees remain in the company. They do what they want to do and drive down the company’s potential for greatness. They suck the life out of the company and take their salary like it’s entitled to them, without the requirement that they really accomplish anything. If you knew how many EBay companies are run from the desk of an employee on another company’s time, your head would spin faster than Linda Blair in The Exorcist....but I digress.
But in the hands of a good manager, performance reviews are priceless, because it will fill a business with good performing people who are focused on success. In short, these performance managed survivors are the ones who are doing their job and making things happen. It weeds out the lazy, the fakers, the parasites.
This brings me to my point: this year’s opportunity to participate in the Great American Performance Review, A.K.A. the upcoming mid-term elections this November.
I am trying not to take sides; this is not about Right or Left, "D" or "R", Tea Party or Move-on. It’s about who is the person you want to either hire or retain in your government.
You are, for one day this year, the CEO/Owner/Hiring Manager of this beautiful country of ours and it is YOU who must determine if your employees (A.K.A politicians) are doing the job you hired them to do. If they are, YOU VOTE FOR THEM. If they are not, YOU FIRE THEM.
I believe all of us deeply love our country. We all have a feeling within us that we want it to do well and we have specific goals we want our employees in government to accomplish when we hire them. When we offered this job to our current representatives/senators/president we informed them of what were the important things we wanted them to accomplish. We continue to remind them of what their priorities are and most certainly they should know that, come re-election time, we will be issuing to them a performance review in the form of a "vote".
So now comes the time when the annoying HR Guy (read: ME) is coming to you to say "Performance reviews are coming due, now is the time to prepare for it. Don't wait until the last minute to gather your impressions of your employee’s performance OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS". Now is the time to become the perfect American CEO.
Good performance reviews take into account the entire time since an employee’s last review. In this case, the last performance review was 2008. It looks at the totality of a person's performance, what goals you told them you wanted accomplished, and how they wasted time (and potentially company assets). Ask yourself:
- Did my employee listen to his boss? (You)
- Did my employee focus on the things that were important? or
- Did my employee focus on projects that were not assigned?
- Was my employee ethical and honest in their business dealings?
- Would I trust this employee with my bank account? Family? Pets? Teenage Daughter?
- Did my employee come in under budget? Was this important?
- Is the company better served with them as an employee? or
- Is it time to find another candidate for the job?
IMPORTANT: A good American CEO is not swayed by a crappy employee who only becomes a good performer six weeks before review time. I can’t tell you how many times I have laughed to myself when a lazy performer suddenly acts like a rock star at work only because evaluations are coming. Be not fooled by this. Too many lazy managers are often tricked into keeping employees because they think their associate finally understands the work that needs to be done. The truth is the employee will revert back to their performance standard the moment the appraisal process is over. If you want to know what 2011 will look like, take a look at what they did in 2009.
In this country, where jobs are few and one in ten of us are seeking work and two in ten are working any job they can find to feed the kids, I am sure you have feelings about what is important and what our government should have been focusing on. If you think it’s going the way you want, then your vote should reflect it. If it is not, please do not file a performance appraisal that says “Meets Expectations” – YOU FIRE THEM!
Be the boss and make the right choice!
Copyright © 2010 Mike Baumgartner | HR | Consulting | Coach | Human Resources | Search - CEO, Worklife Survival Center LLC
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