Reasons Performance Reviews Do Not Work

Am I Wrong? 🤔 Traditional performance reviews are broken. Managers dread them. Employees feel judged. And they rarely lead to real improvement. So why are we still doing them? Performance reviews often: ❌ Focus on past mistakes instead of future growth. ❌ Create stress without meaningful outcomes. ❌ Feel like a checkbox exercise rather than a useful tool. But here's the kicker: Managers spend hours prepping for them, only for employees to walk away frustrated. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗳 𝘄𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁? ✅ Replace the annual review with real-time feedback. Give praise and constructive input when it matters most—right in the moment. ✅ Prioritize regular, meaningful check-ins. A 15-minute conversation every month builds trust and fosters growth. ✅ Shift the focus to goals and development. Help employees see the path ahead instead of being stuck in the past. Employees want clarity. Managers want results. Annual reviews rarely provide either. What do you think? Should we say goodbye to traditional performance reviews? Or is there still a place for them in today’s workplace? Drop your thoughts below 👇 🔄 Share this post with someone in HR who has thoughts on performance reviews! ♻️ I appreciate 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 repost. 𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗛𝗥 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀? Visit my profile and join my newsletter for weekly tips to elevate your career! Stephanie Adams, SPHR #Adamshr #HR

Are Annual Reviews Outdated? Annual reviews used to be the gold standard. But in today’s fast-paced workplace, they fall short. 1. What Is an Annual Review? It’s a once-a-year meeting with your manager to talk performance, give a rating, and maybe discuss raises or bonuses. It’s often the only feedback some people get. 2. What’s the Problem? Feedback comes too late Reviews feel rushed or generic Work goals change too often It creates unnecessary stress They’re often one-sided 3. Why Companies Are Moving On Big names like Adobe and Deloitte have ditched traditional reviews. They now use: Frequent check-ins Peer feedback Real-time tools Ongoing coaching 4. What’s Replacing Them? Quick conversations throughout the year Feedback after each project Tools like 15Five or Lattice to track goals A shift from “what you did” to “where you’re growing” 5. What Still Works? In some industries, annual reviews are still required. But even then, they’re more effective when paired with regular support and communication. Final Thought: A once-a-year review isn’t enough. Great performance management is ongoing, clear, and focused on growth. What’s your take—keep them or move on? ⬇️ ♻️ Repost to join the conversation ➕ Follow Ricardo Cuellar for more workplace insights

I am so grateful to my past coworkers and in particular to the engineers and other brainiacs who questioned traditional HR and management policies and got me to question them, too. Here are some of the questions they asked me that I didn’t have a good answer for: 1. When a job ad says a candidate should have two years of C++ plus experience, what does that actually mean? Are they expected to have worked with C++ exclusively for the entire last two years? Or to have worked with C++ for part of the time during the last five years, or what exactly? These questions helped me see that asking for a certain number of years of anything is foolish and will only keep out talented candidates. 2. In a performance review, the ratings like excellent, above average, etc. – what are we being measured against? Does it mean excellent or above average compared to the imaginary, typical person in the role (like WAR in baseball)? Or is it average, above average or excellent in relation to what our manager thinks is our individual potential? Also, how are these assessments made? These questions got me to see that performance reviews are nonsense. There is no business reason to invest the time and energy they require. Anyone who wants feedback should be able to get it, but there is no reason to force employees and managers to sit down and talk about “performance” – whatever that means – once a year or at any other interval. We do too many unnecessary and counterproductive things at work because we’ve been taught to do them. If we can’t make the case that a process or policy prevents a significant harm or advances our mission, it is irresponsible of us to keep that process or policy in place. Which other processes and policies hang on year after year, although they make no sense?

Maybe it’s time to start over One of the CEOs I’m coaching recently called me, exasperated. He’d just come out of another round of mid-year performance reviews. He described the ritual we all know too well: Goals set in January that everyone forgot by March. Feedback requests nobody wanted to give - or receive. Self-reviews that sounded like a mix of sales pitches and confessions. Calibration sessions behind closed doors where people who barely knew the work decided who was “exceeds,” “meets,” or “below.” Development plans destined to sit untouched in the HR system. “And then,” he said, “we all acted surprised that nothing has changed.” He paused. “Why are we still doing this?” It was the question that most leaders think but rarely voice. I asked him: “Do you believe this process is actually salvageable?” There was a long silence. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We’ve tried everything - simplifying the form, shortening the cycle, training managers to be better coaches. It still feels broken.” Then he said something that made me sit up straight: “What if we just started over? Blow it up if we have to. Let’s build something that actually changes behavior, not just records it. Because honestly, when was the last time a performance review changed how you or I showed up the next day?” That’s when it clicked. This CEO didn’t care about performance reviews. He cared about performance. He cared about the conversations people actually need to have: The hard truths no one says out loud. The recognition people crave. The clarity on where they stand and how to grow. Making all their work visible - not just what someone remembers from last month. It’s about designing a performance culture where feedback is real-time, usable, and impactful, not an annual (or semi-annual) box-ticking exercise. So here’s my question for every leader reading this: Why do we keep pretending this broken system will suddenly start working? If you could start from scratch, what would you build instead? What if we designed something that: Made feedback an everyday habit, not an annual ritual. Valued growth as much as outcomes. Treated people like adults who want clarity, not just scores. Captured real-time data to truly see everyone’s impact. Tied pay to market value and role scope - instead of using flawed ratings to justify it. That CEO stopped tweaking around the edges. He’s building something new, and he’s given his HR team permission to rethink everything. It may be imperfect at first. But it will be built for how the business needs to excel. And that’s what matters in today's workplace - impact, not activity. If you’ve ever blown up your performance process, or even thought about it, I’d love to hear your story. Maybe this is the year we finally stop pretending that performance reviews actually drive performance.

Data suggests top performers get the lowest-quality feedback, and it's worst for high-performing women, who are negatively stereotyped
up to 7x more often than men. Textio analyzed performance reviews for more than 23,000 workers across over 250 organizations - their data reveals a critical blind spot in how we view, nurture, and retain top talent - especially diverse talent. It's clearly time to rethink the feedback processes. If there's any performance review training in the companies who were a part of this study, it's not working. I've heard of people using AI to help them write performance reviews, and Textio's Lift offering does this, but I think a great use of generative AI would be to analyze performance reviews in real-time as they are being written by people, flag potential bias, and provide feedback/coaching to the person writing the reviews. And it would be nice to include introvert/extrovert bias - which cuts across gender, race/ethnicity, and age. What do you think? Have you seen any effective strategies to combat these issues? Textio's full research report can be found here: https://lnkd.in/ef93v2dG #bias #performance #reviews #AI

Dear leaders Please start caring enough about your team and do this. As the end of the year arrives, in most organizations, so do performance reviews And too many times I hear employees are shocked They’re blindsided. Why? Because the leader failed to provide them with feedback throughout the year. They waited For performance reviews to come around. It’s the perfect time, right? NO! And in some cases, it’s not just one thing. It’s three, four or five things they need to improve. As a result, two things occur: 1.  The leader allows themselves to be the victim of poor performance Blaming the employee for the poor results. 2.  The employee continues to make the same mistakes over and over again. They never have a chance to improve before it’s “marked on their record.” Before their pay is impacted Before the team is impacted. Before the organization’s results are impacted. And they go into a state of shock. Anger. Sadness. And their performance further declines. What was once a “simple” opportunity to overcome. Has now become a battle to overcome. And all you had to do to prevent this… Was give them feedback. In a timely manner. If you don’t care about your people. They won’t care about you. Or your business. Feedback shows you care. You’re invested in them. In their development. In their success. Stop waiting. Start caring.  #executivecoaching #executivesandmanagement #management #hr #leadership

Let's talk about how we measure success at work, because most folks don't even know what they're chasing. I read Lean Out recently, which talks about how we expect employees to perform without telling them the rules. Companies demand "increased productivity" but won't define what that means. We have secret "up or out" cultures but don't publicly share those expectations. How are people supposed to really win if the rules keep changing or nobody actually says them out loud? This isn't some new drama, I've been fortunate enough to learn about performance reviews from Kim Minnick about old school military ratings in the 1940s to today's wishy-washy performance frameworks, work has always had these quiet rules running in the background. If you’re not calling out real expectations, not just what’s in the handbook, you’re stacking the deck against your own people. Write down the expectations. Spell out the rules. Call out the “unspoken stuff,” the stuff folks only learn when it’s too late. If you want people to do better, show them what you’re actually measuring, not just hand out surprises at review time. Let's stop making folks guess what success looks like. #HRCommunity #PeopleOps

Performance reviews work *against* high-performance. It didn't always work that way, but it does now because: 👉🏼 Markets move a lot faster now. 👈🏼 To react to market changes, companies change priorities. *The goals are the same* but the things we do, the priorities, to achieve the goals change a lot more frequently now. Because of this... 👉🏼 Company demand for skills is more volatile. 👈🏼 To compete, companies labor needs are changing faster. That means role fidelity is becoming less clear. What is a 'marketing manager' today? It has 1,000 meanings now. 10 years ago it had about 50 meanings. 👉🏼 The ROI of feedback is dwindling. 👈🏼 Have you ever gotten feedback in a performance review for work you did that didn't matter anymore or had no impact in the first place? Yea, that's adding more wasted time onto time wasted. It's also tone deaf if the employee isn't going to keep doing that work, so what's the point of looking backwards? Yahoo just announced they quit doing performance reviews. Who else quit them?

Bad feedback can happen for good performers and bad performers. Bad feedback happens when a leader decides the narrative, has limited data, and avoids timely interactive conversations. Bad feedback can sound like “Good job, keep it up.” or “You need to do a better job.” The open questions are what was good or what was bad about my performance. How do I know what to keep doing and what to start doing? Welcome to Monday Minute Week 62. Bad feedback lacks facts and clarity to improve performance. Imagine going an entire year with no feedback or being told things are on track 🤔Then walking into your annual review to hear for the first time your performance is subpar. Insight - The best feedback is an ongoing collective assessment of performance. It highlights wins and losses with recommendations to strengthen future contributions. Elements of bad feedback: vague, dated, personal attack, lacks solutions, hear say, and does not allow employee input. Call to action: Listen and take notes during feedback. Assess if feedback is true or false based on data. Assess if this is the right leader, role or company. Bring all the data together to determine how it aligns with personal career ambitions. Stay in control - Make a decision. Avoid arguing with a leader that has chosen to not give good feedback. #leadership #feedback #mondayminute #inclusiveleadership