Culbert, a professor of management at UCLA, goes on to say that the performance review is "a pretentious, bogus practice that produces absolutely nothing that any thinking executive should call a corporate plus."
In Culbert’s book, Get Rid of the Performance Review!, he advocates instead the performance preview, which he says will actually accomplish what performance reviews never have:
- Ensuring hierarchical control
- Holding people accountable for their actions and their results
- Giving employees the feedback and evaluations they need to improve their skills
- Giving the company more of what it requires
Make It Go Both Ways
Culbert’s overriding problem with standard assessments is that they are written entirely from the boss’s point of view. The boss, or HR, or top management—or all of them in concert—have established performance standards for each job. And each person who holds a position in the organization is assessed at least once or twice a year on how well the boss thinks he or she has performed against the predetermined objectives in the job description.
This leads to a culture of fear, Culbert asserts. A boss-dominated relationship will seldom elicit a straightforward statement that reveals what the subordinate actually believes. That individual is going to do what any individual does when trying to make a good impression—focus more on saying what will earn points than stating what he or she honestly believes. In the performance review, pretense is every bit as important as fact, says Culbert.
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The performance review system does enormous damage on a personal level, Culbert believes, making work lives miserable, and leaving employees anxious and depressed. On the corporate level, the damage is just as bad: it wastes an enormous amount of time and energy, and it prevents companies from tapping the innovative, outside-the-box thinking that so many employees are capable of, if they weren’t so afraid, Culbert adds.
He illustrates his points with his vision of an imaginary early performance review for the late Steve Jobs of Apple:
Boss: You’re not making adequate progress on the circuit board that’s your number one performance objective.
Steve: I’ve got a great idea that can revolutionize this company, not to mention the world.
Boss: That’s not your job. You are weeks behind our established deadlines for the circuit board.
Imagine that review going on every day in thousands of companies with millions of employees. That’s a sad loss, Culbert says.
Another problem with performance reviews is that "you don’t tell someone to change something, and—presto, it’s corrected," Culbert says. "How can you give someone advice they can trust, when you don’t understand how they see situations and why? How can you give someone prescriptions for development when you don’t understand how they learn? You can’t."
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HR Takes a Hit
The old performance review system may not be good for employees or for the company, but guess who it is good for, says Culbert—HR!
The system gives HR a "keeper-of-dirty-little-secrets/KGB-like status, ensuring that all managers treat them [with] respect."
HR‘s "lame excuse" for keeping negative reviews is "legal backup," Culbert says. However, the ones who sue are the ones with positive comments in their files. It’s common sense, he says.
In tomorrow’s Advisor, more of Culbert’s take on performance reviews, and an introduction to a special webinar—just for compensation managers at smaller organizations.
I am an HR professional. I have been in this field for over 20 years, along with being a professional in the field of law firm management.
I am not a devotee of performance reviews. In fact, my ideal would be to communicate with the employee on a continuous basis, so that I know what s/he is working on AND thinking about; the employee knows what my expectations are; and s/he is able to talk with me about ideas for improvements or new products or services. Further, in my experience, the employees who most desire to be reviewed ARE the high achievers. They want to discuss what they are doing and how to do it even better; the employees who dread it are the ones who put the least into their jobs. I notice that Mr. Culbert has not explored self-reviews or 360’s — should I take it that he’s never heard of them? Doesn’t believe in them? Or do they simply not fit his theories?
As to the “lame excuse…of backup”, Mr. Culbert evidently has no experience of what HR does, what the ideal personnel file contains, and has never had to defend against a lawsuit. Counter to what Mr. Culbert apparently believes, competent HR professionals maintain files that include the good, the bad AND the ugly. They are not merely repositories of negative material to be whipped out when the employer has decided to fire an employee.
I’m surprised you published this without interviewing professionals who do know something about this subject. If you are going to continue to give his thoughts space on your page, perhaps you should consider giving the same opportunity to professionals in the field so that they can clear up his numerous — and dare I say, egregious — misimpressions and misinformation.