'Performance reviews should be a thing of the past'

For many employees, the performance review with their manager is a highly emotional experience that can lead to tears or even resignations, according to a survey from Adobe.

From a sample of 1,500 office workers, 22% admitted to having cried after a review and almost as many said they'd quit. 

More men said they'd cried than women and more men also said they had quit.

Indeed, managers spend around 20 hours a year on them and consider them time-consuming distractions from their actual work, surveys have found.

Moreover, managers have been found to struggle with distilling how employees performed all year long into one annual meeting.

Joydeep Hor, Founder & Managing Principal, People + Culture Strategies, compares performance appraisals to his schooldays when he would anxiously view his report to see what marks he got.

“This twice-yearly feedback became the only data point I had around academic self-worth,” he said.

“This twice-yearly feedback became the only data point I had around academic self-worth.

“The process of performance reviews is as stressful for managers as it is for their teams.”

Unfortunately, managers might be giving feedback that they have been bottling up for a long time, according to Hor.

“The delayed delivery of critical feedback is hardly conducive to building a good relationship,” he said.

“Platitudes and niceties are more regularly delivered anyway. Performance feedback is essential; performance reviews should be a thing of the past.”

Joydeep Hor will be speaking at the National HR Summit in Sydney in the Public Sector Forum on 25-26 March. To register, click here.