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What if we replaced the traditional performance review with something called career conversations?
Let’s follow a bouncing ball here quickly. Some companies — including some big, legacy ones — are removing the idea of performance reviews. This is logical. Performance reviews are mostly a dumpster fire more rooted in process than, well, actually improving the employee being evaluated. There’s been research for years that killing performance reviews will actually develop employees quicker. But, you know, change is hard. That’s Issue 1. Issue 2 is that performance reviews are one of the only things HR truly “owns,” and a lot of work is about telling everyone else what you “own” process-wise. If the performance review goes away, does that make HR less relevant? It might.
Issue 3 is this: when you remove performance reviews, what do you replace them with? In a lot of companies, that answer has been “absolutely nothing.” Here is what’s happening. Most hard-charging guys running point at different companies don’t really care about this idea of performance reviews or employee development. They have their lieutenants. They know their silo. The rest of it is just noise to them. Who wants to sit and evaluate 14 drones who will never get to the level I’m at, right? I need to go analyze some revenue plays, not do this HR bullshit.
