There are many HR professionals who believe that assessments don’t do employees (or corporate cultures) any good. Instead, they lead to negative, even toxic work environments. Read on to learn why evaluations can do more harm than good, and what you can do to change that situation.
The Truth about HR Professionals and Employee Reviews
You would think that people in the human resources department would be the most enthusiastic advocates for performance assessments. Think again.
The automated HR services provider BambooHR
carried out a survey of HR professionals regarding their attitudes towards evaluations. Researchers were surprised by the results. Three out of four HR professionals surveyed are highly critical of employee reviews.
BambooHR identified five of the HR professionals’ top complaints about evaluations:
- they foster competition, not collaboration;
- they create unnecessary and unhelpful office politics;
- they don’t accurately reflect performance;
- they hinder innovation and diminish engagement;
- they don’t have constructive outcomes.
Criticisms that Hit Close to Home
Are HR professionals correct? Can performance assessments really be as awful as they say they are?
Academic research justifies these claims. Kevin Murphy, a scientist at Colorado State University and an expert on employee reviews, says that his research shows that managers’ feedback tends to discourage employees rather than motivate them.
Furthermore, when people do perform well, their companies often don’t reward them for it. To add insult to injury, these same firms don’t discipline low performing employees.
You don’t have to turn to academic research to see that the traditional evaluation no longer meets the needs of today’s businesses. Over the past five years, a number of major corporations including Accenture, Deloitte and GE, have overhauled the way they assess their employees’ performance.
Managers talk to more people about how the employee is doing to give them a broader picture of that person’s achievements.
Changing the Situation for the Better
What are some of the ways you can improve your review process? BambooHR’s survey of employees offers some suggestions.
Employees want frequent, informal and open conversations about how they’re doing. They crave career guidance. And when they do something right, they believe they should receive recognition (as well as a reward) for it.
Grapevine Evaluations: Improving Employee Reviews
Do you want to build a culture of collaboration by improving your review process?
Contact Grapevine Evaluations today. Grapevine Evaluations provides 360 feedback tools
to companies such as Pandora, Macy’s, and Thomson Reuters.