One activity that’s pretty much universally hated by both managers and employees is the Annual Performance Review (APR). Why companies persist in conducting these is beyond me as there’s a much more effective way to review and improve your people.
Before addressing a better method, let’s talk about why almost all managers and employees detest the annual process. For managers, APRs involve hours of preparation. Depending upon how the review system is constructed, the managers typically have to sift back through 12 months of activities for each employee, look for trends, analyze how well individual goals were met, take into account external and internal changes that took place during the year, prepare forms for HR and possibly compute amounts for bonuses and raises. That’s a ton of work for even one team member, and most managers are doing it for at least a half dozen or so direct reports.
