Annual reviews are the bane of professional existence. Evaluating human talent should be about developing our best people in a way that we can leverage their skills and tap into their boundless potential.
Unfortunately, performance reviews become an exercise in anecdotal non performance, and identifying employee failures, to justify small increases in salaries. No one individual is to blame here — the system is broken. A concoction of metrics that reduce talent to an arbitrary number is sad.
Organizations save money, let talent wither away and hard working employees hang their heads low, sapped of whatever motivation is left. No one wins when we focus on the wrong things. We have to pat people on their backs, help them get better, and champion their cause.
About Hemant Rustogi