Time to Fire Performance Review? Not on Your Life!

An article interviewing Samuel Culbert, the author of a new book, "Get Rid of the Performance Review", was in our local newspaper 2 days ago. Although a very passionate person, I have seldom felt so outraged as by this book. As with so many good things, Mr. Culbert "throws the baby out with the bath water" in his effort to be politically correct.

To be fair he does espouse several things with which I agree; we'll cover those now.

First, he encourages dialogue, and he wants management to take responsibility for productivity, which is more than fair, if the individual is accountable for their job performance as well. More on this later.

Secondly, employees should have a big part in how the assignment is accomplished, and share that with their superior. A consensus can be reached, and therefore they're in it together. Total agreement here.

Thirdly, Professor Culbert implies that management is at fault for not getting involved enough. Once again I agree here; management must "roll up its sleeves", assist positively, and foster joint accountability. Definitely true, but also more comments are required, and will come later.

Finally, he implies that Performance Reviews are used for "companies to justify firings & layoffs." He further states, "If people aren't learning the lessons implied by the mistakes they're making, it will be obvious and easy enough to get them out the door and on the road. You don't need a checklist for that." Wow; he is really out of touch here. It makes me wonder how long it's been since he has been in an actual workplace.

To respond, let me start from the top. The uppermost problem in ALL of the workplace now is accountability. Yes, management must be accountable, but so must the individual. The only way this is accomplished is to MUTUALLY agree upon goals, measure them, and then evaluate the results. Certainly much of this is handled in regular and candid one to ones, constructive feedback, and coaching, but at some point, the goal has been achieved or it hasn't. If it has, then mutually celebrate, if it hasn't, what needs to be changed, funded, or approached uniquely to succeed? Still at some point, there has been success or failure, or somewhere in between. We learn and move forward, but we do need a record of how we did, all of us, management included.

As for management "rolling up their sleeves", I'm in favor of that, but "joint accountability" does not mean management takes the blame, and the non-performing employee skates. Management must get results, but so must individuals.

Sadly, Professor Culbert believes employers are the bad guys, lurking around with their performance reviews, just waiting to catch someone fouling up so they can fire them. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Good companies know that excellent employees are very hard to find, and therefore want to the utmost to take care of them.

Certainly, in hard times such as we've seen recently, employers, when faced with layoffs to reduce cost, will choose many from the poorest performers. If this is wrong, from where should they better choose ? If the answer is seniority, can you accurately tell me that it is better for the company to choose by tenure which will include some of the best performers? Wouldn't you like to keep your best? Isn't this better for the future of the company and jobs?

A final note. The author made the grand point of stating that it's easy to get non-performers out the door. Where has he been? Does he see his non-performing but tenured peers at UCLA let go? How much documentation (rightfully so) does it require to fire any given worker in management OR from the ranks?

Let's keep the Performance Appraisal, but let's do it right, and win together.