The Method of Madness

With Q4 here, my clients have started to grumble about that two word phrase: performance reviews. It’s easy to understand why some HR folks think of performance reviews and cry, scream, or both. The process is usually ill-defined, paper-laden, and then there’s the problem of getting people to complete the review – much less having a manager find the time to have to formally review with the employee. And so, HR resigns itself to yet another month-long, angst-ridden process where who knows what happens, just that it has to happen so Finance can justifiably deny and approve raises this year.

Honestly, I like the concept of performance reviews because, at its heart, it is supposed to be a blend of the subjective and objective, combining to create a statement of how productive and good of an employee you’ve been throughout the year. Like other great ideas, though, performance reviews some times become one of those “best left on paper” (no pun intended) kinds; and therein lies the catch 22: performance reviews are awful and time consuming, but we must do them to justify [insert goal here].

Performance review failure can be the result of a number of things: poor implementation and design, no ties to organizational/employee goals, and no one owning the process.

1. Poor Implementation/Design: Whether creating your own in-house system or purchasing a product… it has to make sense. Don’t just Google ‘competencies’, pick the top ten results, and there you have the skill set you’re evaluating employees on. The performance review process should be unique to your organization; customize the tool set to your needs, and ensure it reflects the nature of how work gets done.

2. Tying it all up… The purpose of conducting the reviews should have an organizational goal in mind. Unfortunately, “justifying compensation” is a pretty lame goal, and it’s often the only one tied to performance reviews (hence why they’re often so much anxiety about them). When it comes to performance, you have to look deeper and a 2.5% raise can’t be the only outcome. Performance reviews should be used to take a hard look at what your employees have accomplished, and where there’s room for improvement (or career development, as we like to call it these days).

3. Owning the process. There are three keys here: employees should feel they get something out of the process; HR should facilitate the entire process; executives should feel they get something out of the process, too. For employees, they should get something transformative, a constructive look at a year’s progress and where to go next. HR needs to dedicate effort to creating a performance review process that is timely, appropriate, and constructive. Executives can use the performance review experience to benchmark their employees’ skills, and create a gap analysis to see where deficiencies lay.

Like any corporate process, performance reviews have to be meaningful and done right to bring true value to your organization. Looking at the process like it’s just another piece of HR’s administrivia will ultimately bring the process down and nothing good will ever come out of it. When you make the process mean something, and can demonstrate how the process can do good, that’s when performance reviews really start to live up to their intentions.

If there was ever a fad in Human Resources, social media would be it. Clients have been asking me about it a lot lately, and when I finally sent out an email about how iCIMS can work with it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an interest! That’s why this article from the NY Times surprises me.

Comparing Facebook to North Korea is a fairly bold statement and, at the least, a misinformed one. It reminds me of a phrase that I use fairly often when I encounter people who have a tool who want to use it in a way it wasn’t designed: “It’s like putting in a screw with a hammer; just doesn’t work.” That’s what I get out of this article: a bunch of people are unhappy Facebook doesn’t work the way they think it should (or should have).

Facebook was designed to one thing, and one thing only: connect users together to form friendships. Everything else it does is to enhance the way you can create new or develop current connections. In regards to HR, we’re using it (and social media at large) to connect with candidates and keep our candidate pool engaged with us so, that when it comes time to hire, we have candidates that not only have the skills we want, but also the knowledge and passion for the organization too.

The article goes on to cite other causes of unhappiness, but again, you have to wonder if these people would have used the service anyway if they had just a) read the Terms of Service, or b) used Facebook to develop meaningful connections rather than have a race to the 1,000st friend. A well-maintained friend list can keep those who you simply can’t contact all the time abreast of what you’re doing. A good Facebook profile can the starting point of launching your “personal” brand. Used correctly, your Facebook can actually speak for itself and actually give recruiters reasons to hire you!

In short, use the tool properly. I don’t think I have to say what happens when you don’t. Social media has its place, and it’s here to stay. And those who harness it for all it’s worth definitely have an advantage over those who do not.