Get Rid of the Performance Review?

Tonight on the HR Happy Hour Show, our guest will be UCLA Professor Samuel Culbert, author of the recent book, 'Get Rid of the Performance Review!'.

Show time is 8PM EDT and the call in number is 646-378-1086.

From the title alone, it is abundantly clear where Professor Culbert stands on the issue, and in the book he makes his argument clearly and forcefully.

According to Culbert performance reviews are fatally flawed for the following reasons (there are a few more in the book, but these are the major ones):

1. They are completely one-sided, boss-dominated exercises, where only one opinion matters, the boss, and employees quickly learn to adapt and adjust to 'boss-pleasing' behavior, that is not necessarily in the best interests of the organization as a whole.

2. The notion of 'pay for performance' that is embraced by so many organizations, is largely BS, and that compensation is mostly a product of market conditions, whether the firm desires to retain an employee, and the available budget to adjust pay treatment.  Performance, especially as documented in the formal review, factors very little into this compensation decision.

3. Performance reviews actually have the opposite of the desired effect, to help employees improve and develop.  They are de-motivating, de-humanizing, and effectively sour the most important relationship in the organization, that of boss-employee.  

That is the gist of the arguments made in the book that argue for the abolishment of the performance review as most of us recognize it.

Professor Culbert then continues in the book to offer and describe his suggested alternative to the formal, traditional annual performance review, a construct he has termed the 'Performance Preview', a kind of ongoing, two-way dialogue centered around discussion of some key questions that are meant to better inform and equip both the boss and the employee as to each other's needs, styles, and work preferences.  

Rather than dive in to all the details of the 'Preview', (I have to save something for the show), I would rather get your opinions on the issue of performance reviews, and perhaps some insights into your experiences with them, both administering them as a manager, and receiving them as an employee.

So to help me out in preparation for the show tomorrow, please drop a comment letting me know where you stand on performance reviews. 

Are they:

1. Essential to the management of people and the alignment of effort to organizational objectives

2. A largely administrative process meant to provide legal backup for disciplinary procedures

3. A great tool for employee development, if only we could teach managers to really coach and mentor employees more effectively

4. A complete waste of time, and a soul-crushing, morale killing exercise in futility, and they should be abolished.

5. Something else entirely.

Let me know what you think in the comments, or send out a tweet with your thoughts in the next couple of days - just be sure to tag it with #HRHappyHour.

Oh yeah, please feel free to rate the effectiveness of this post, my self-assessment gives it a solid 'Meets Objectives'.

Rolling the Dice

Let's say you were,  after a lengthy tenure as a professional with one organization, suddenly and without time to prepare found yourself downsized, right-sized, or otherwise-sized and found yourself in the unenviable position of being out of work.

What are the first five things you would do?

And for now, let's eliminate from consideration any Johnny Paycheck - Steven Slater dramatic exits involving cursing out the customer or boss or flaming out on Facebook or YouTube.  Face it, you are probably not that creative or interesting.

1. Call your spouse/significant other/drinking buddies.

2. Process the key question of 'When was the last time I did a resume?'

3. Do an amazingly fast mental calculation estimating the length of time certain prized luxury items (boat/Harley/comic book collection) may be at risk, and what you could get for them on Craigslist.

4. Call drinking buddies again.

5. Look online for potential openings. 

I'd be willing to bet in those first five things you'd do immediately after being thrust into the role of job-seeker that you would likely hit up one of the major job boards and run a search for postings in your locality/industry/area of expertise.  In the USA that means Monster.com, Careerbuilder, Indeed, etc.  

But if you are in the broad category of IT professional, you'd certainly be all over Dice.com.  Dice has been the leading job site for IT professionals in the US for what seems like forever.  I personally found the most lucrative and long lasting IT contract I ever had on Dice.

A quick search of companies listing positions on Dice reads like page one of the list of the Fortune 500.

As a major job board in the IT industry, Dice enjoys top of mind status.  But we all know the world of recruiting and job advertising has changed dramatically.  The dawn of social and online professional networking, (essentially LinkedIn), has certainly affected how organizations and recruiters seek talent, and how individuals can find opportunities, connect with employers, and advance their careers.

Major boards like Dice are not immune to these changes, while seeking an opening on Dice or Monster might possibly be in the 'first five' things a job seeker would do, it seems more and more likely that actually making the needed connection to stand out in this incredibly tough job market can't really happen via the old-school job board.  Following, friending, liking, connecting - whatever you call it, to many these are the new paradigms in the job search.  

And the folks that run the big job boards understand this.  They're not stupid. They know the world is changing, and that their services have to change as well.  

Tonight at 8PM EDT on the HR Happy Hour Show we will talk with one of these leaders, Tom Silver, SVP of Dice.com to get a better perspective on how leaders of big boards assess the recruiting landscape, how they are meeting the new challenges, and how the overall market for IT work and workers is faring.

You can listen to the show on the show home page - here, or via the widget below:

You can call in to listen and participate - 646-378-1086.

I hope you can join us for what should be an interesting and informative look behind the scenes at Dice.com. 

What do you hate the most about work?

What do you hate the most about work in general, or your job in particular?

The low pay?

The crappy hour long commute to the office just to sit in a cube and spend all day communicating electronically with your colleagues, thinking all the while, 'I could have done all this sitting home in my PJs and saved two hours in the car'.

The shaky bathroom habits of your co-workers?

How about this one - the annual performance review?

Yep, the annual performance review typically rates pretty high on the list of unpleasant activities that employees and managers have to endure.  We (mostly) hate them, we (generally) feel that they are a valuable and necessary activity to try and ensure employee efforts are aligned with overall organizational objectives, and that employees are provided the platform and opportunity to learn, develop, and simply become more engaged in the jobs and careeers.

And (theoretically) we tie the outcomes of the annual performance review to some if not all compensation outcomes.  The whole 'pay for performance' idea, (I bet you have heard about it).

But generally, despite the decades of managerial attention, scholarship, and execution, many if not most of us have come to the conclusion that 'performance reviews suck'.

Tonight on the HR Happy Hour Show we are going to take on this topic head on, with two of the founders of an interesting and innovative technology company called Sonar6.  Sonar6 makes performance review and succession planning software that promises to help your organizations execute a performance management process that doesn't suck.

How can technology impact the performance process in such a dramatic manner? How can a new and different approach turn 'suck' into 'fun'?

How can a couple of guys from New Zealand make a big impact in the world of HR Technology?

Tune in to the HR Happy Hour Show tonight, 8pm EDT, to talk with Sonar6 CEO John Holt and Co-founder Mike Carden and find out.  Better still, jump into the conversation by calling in at 646-378-1086.

Note : If you are not familiar with Sonar6, take a look at this 'Brief History of Sonar6' video:

Thanks guys at Sonar6 for staying up late calling in from the future to join us on the show.

Going to States

In the world of high school athletics, 'going to states', i.e. advancing through local and regional competition to have the chance to compete at the state level has long been a goal and desire of almost all scholastic competitors. 

Making it to the state championship in any sport is seen as a mark of accomplishment, and students that achieve the honor often remember the experience, win or lose, for many years.

Next month the HR Happy Hour show is 'going to states', so to speak - Steve and the show will be heading down to the HR Florida State Conference & Expo, set for August 29 - September 1.  The HR Florida event is big time, expectations are high for a record-setting attendance, and certainly there is a sense of unbridled enthusiasm.

So in the spirit of the excitement of the show going to 'states', tonight on the HR Happy Hour we will do a bit of an 'HR Florida Preview', starting at 8pm EDT, with a call in number of 646-378-1086.

 We will talk with some of the event planners and leaders, most if not all of the members of the HR Blogger Panel, (the law firm of Stelzner, Tincup, McFarlane and Oxford), as well as some of the session presenters, and who knows what other special guests.

If you are an HR Pro planning to attend HR Florida, just thinking about it, or simply envious of those that will be there, I encourage you to listen in to the show tonight, and hear first-hand all about one of the premier events for HR professionals anywhere in the country. You can't hold your mud.

And the best thing about HR Florida?  

You can make it all the way to 'states' without have to beat Shute first.

Enterprise 2.0 and HR

Tonight on the HR Happy Hour show we will discuss Enterprise 2.0 with Professor Andrew McAfee, the person that first used the term 'Enterprise 2.0'  (back in 2006), and the author of the essential book on the subject 'Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools For Your Organization's Toughest Challenges'.

The show can be heard live starting at 8PM EDT - here, and using the player below, or via the call in number 646-378-1086.

 

 

What is Enterprise 2.0?  Why is it sometimes simply passed off as 'Facebook for the Corporation', or simply as a diversion or distraction from the 'real' work of making products, delivering services, or simply keeping existing processes running? Why do many in HR shrug E2.0 off as another set of IT technologies that they would rather have nothing to do with?

Perhaps it is because for many, if not most, organizations the ability to continue to invent and produce products the market desires, or the skills and capabilities to deliver valuable and sought after services has become much more tied to the organization's capability in capturing and sharing knowledge, in connecting its people with each other (and the external community) more effectively, and in creating environments where ideas can be generated, and the best of these ideas lifted to the top.

These challenges that organizations are facing can be met by an ever growing class of collaborative tools and technologies, platforms that support, guide, and enhance all the things that the best people do naturally - create, share, enhance, and innovate.  Any many organizations have begun to leverage these platforms internally, with more joining the ranks of 'Enterprise 2.0' converts every day.

But as we will talk about on the show, just deploying a fancy new collaboration platform inside an organization does not guarantee all the promise of E2.0 will immediately be realized.  Considerations of the business issues that need solving, the relationships of the participating employees and groups, and the culture of the organization all need to be taken into account.  

It is fashionable to talk about these kinds of transformative projects as having little to do with technology, but rather to classify them as change management efforts, with success mostly to do with understanding and influencing people's behavior in the organization.  

If that is true, then who in the organization is better positioned than Human Resources to define, architect, and help lead these projects to success?

And what better place than the HR Happy Hour show for Human Resources professionals to learn more about Enterprise 2.0 from the person who coined the term, and authored the only essential book on the concept?

I hope you can join us tonight for what should be an interesting and informative show.