Hacking Performance Evaluation

Imagine that tomorrow is your annual performance evaluation. How would you feel?

Excited, anxious, fearful, or bored.

If you're not enthusiastic, don't worry, according to Gallup, only 14% of employees believe that traditional annual evaluations inspire them to improve and 58% of companies say that conducting evaluations is a waste of time. On the other hand, Gartner found that 82% of human resources leaders agree with the ineffectiveness of existing evaluation practices.

The reality is that performance evaluation has become the Achilles' heel of organizations, that's why I propose a personification exercise. This is attributing human characteristics to the Performance Evaluation to try to highlight its weaknesses.

I am Mariela Paredes, I have worked 25 years in Human Resources and I love generating change by questioning what we do and today I am going to share my version of the "thousand and one companies".

I imagine the Performance Evaluation as a monster with good intentions, who makes his appearance once a year, but heavy and tedious. With short-term memory, that's why it tends to disproportionately value the employees' recent behaviors (recency bias). Bipolar and unstable, constituting for some a pleasant experience and for others an unpleasant, painful, and uncomfortable experience. With difficulty communicating assertively, reluctant to hold meetings, short-spoken, and with a tendency to label people: as bad, good, excellent, or 1,2.3,4,5. The worst thing is that when he appears he comes accompanied by the league of "The Most Wanted". The so-called "Salary" is a monster that as it grows increases appetite, proving to be the eternal insatiable. The other is the "Super Promotion" a clairvoyant of questionable reputation who tries to predict the employee's future based on the reading of performance cards.

The question is, has it always been like this?...

Actually, no. When the performance evaluation was born in 1813, it was a beloved girl, unconventional, dressed in colors, and very observant, so much so that her father Owen called her the "Silent Watch". She would play at his New Lannark factory every day. It was a colorful rotary cubic wooden piece that hung from the ceiling at each workstation, indicating the workers' performance. Black was bad, white was excellent, blue was good, and yellow was regular. The evaluation was made daily at the end of the day and the next day those who disagreed could raise their complaint. Then the performance was recorded in a book that was kept throughout their working life. So, when Owen walked through the factory, he visually identified people's performance.

Owen didn't punish or reprimand, just by fixing his gaze the collaborator would realize that they needed to improve. The results exceeded expectations and over time all the cubes were white.

Seeing the results, Owen's girl quickly gained fame. Many companies imitated her, but they modified it because it was impossible to have such a personalized approach as Owen's. That's why over time, she lost her essence of continuous improvement and wiped out her sweetness. Of that playful and tireless girl, who was in the factory every day and wore colorful clothes, not even a shadow remained. She started to leave home without a trace. In her absence, no one provided feedback and when she visited during the holidays, seeing that she was paid little attention, she became cold and vengeful.

Meanwhile, in the "Workplace Aspirations" laboratory, they made all the efforts to replicate the Aladdin's lamp and one day they succeeded, a huge genie came out and left them stunned and granted them the possibility to ask for 3 wishes. Of course, the first wish was to eliminate Performance Evaluation.

At first, everyone was happy, but over time performance started to drop and happiness faded. Some collaborators were disoriented and discouraged, they didn't know if they were doing well or badly. Others started to question whether it was worth it to try, as that effort was unnoticed. Others didn't care, the typical people who exchange time for money exclusively. But the worst part was for those seeking professional development because it was like trying to climb stairs blindfolded.

Soon, in the "Career Aspirations" laboratory, they realized that they had made a mistake, Performance Evaluation wasn't bad, on the contrary, it was necessary. Then they began to question where the problem was:

—Why only appear at the end of the year?

Imagine for a moment that your child does something wrong and you tell them, wait until the end of the year to sit down and talk about your behavior. Would it make sense? ... the feedback will have become irrelevant by the time they receive it and what's worse, we will have wasted the subsequent time in which the child could have corrected their behavior. Feedback has to be immediate, otherwise, it loses its effectiveness. According to Gallup, in a weekly feedback system, employees have 2.7 times more chances of being more participative and 3.2 times more motivated. Additionally, according to BetterWorks, companies that changed to continuous performance management outperform their competitors by 24%.

—Why does it have to come accompanied by "Salary" and "Promotion"?

If it doesn't come alone, it's normal for people to use their shield and sword to defend themselves so as not to lose a salary increase or the possibility of being promoted. If we want them to lower their guard, we have to learn to differentiate the continuous learning zone where mistakes are expected and feedback must be permanent, from the performance zone where we analyze goal achievement. In other words, like when you're behind the curtains in rehearsals and on the live stage.

—Why, with long-term memory problems, technology is not used to help?

—Why have we let empathy be taken hostage and freed the judge that we all have? A judge who only judges from his perspective, focused on the WHAT, without considering the HOW or the WHY, causing frustration and demotivation. Why has the power of absolute and irrefutable cataloging of a collaborator's performance been given to bipolarity? When we should have a decentralized evaluation to have feedback from different perspectives with a 360-degree view.

—Why do we want to manipulate results with forced distribution curves? If under the concept of continuous improvement, all people should tend to be located towards the right where excellent performance is.

—Why, knowing of our problems with assertive communication, do we only pay attention to the final score and not the process itself? It is precisely in the process where training should be mandatory, to learn to be assertive, to deal with difficult situations, to say what needs to be said, at the right time, without hurting anyone.

—Why, having been born as a fruit of creativity, colorful and personalized, has it been limited to wearing the same format for years and every occasion, without taking into account that we have different audiences and different points to reinforce?

Shaking their heads, the scientists in a sign of confusion, said.. — What do we ask the genius?

After an uncomfortable silence in unison, they asked for their second wish — That it be more continuous, less formalized, personalized, decentralized, and more agile, To which the genius said: — Wish granted.

Things began to improve, but not for long. In 2019, the pandemic arrived, people had to work from home, and performance evaluation became blind. It could no longer be the "silent watchdog" as his father Owen called it.

Seeing that companies were collapsing, the scientists used their last wish to save the world.

Without the possibility of asking for more wishes, they said to the genius: — "What can we do now?"

The genius replied: — Simple, if performance evaluation is blind, now people have to be their eyes. For this, they must learn to be humble and self-knowing. Record their progress and achievements. Negotiate indicators, concrete goals, and product characteristics. Ask for feedback instead of waiting for it. Move from a passive role to an active role that obliges leaders to also abandon their traditional role as an evaluator to a questioning style that leads to deep analysis for personal and professional growth.

In one word, become the protagonists of their story.

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Mariela Paredes

Dr. in Industrial Psychology, Master in Business Administration, Specialist in Human Factors and Crisis Management.

25 years of experience in the field of Human Resources. About 10,000 hours of training in which more than 20,000 people have been trained.