Sinapinsiemen

Useimmissa keskisuurissa ja suuremmissa yrityksissä käydään vuosittain (joissakin puolivuosittain) kehitys- ja/tai tuloskeskusteluja, rakkalla lapsella voi olla useampiakin nimiä. Niiden hyödyllisyydestä tosin voi olla montaa mieltä. Ainakin Isossa-Britanniassa tehdyn tutkimuksen mukaan

Almost half (44 per cent) did not think their boss was honest during the process, 29 per cent thought they were pointless, and a fifth felt they had had an unfair appraisal, according to the YouGov poll of 3000 workers.

Alexander Kjerulf listaa 9 syytä, miksi nämä keskustelut ovat huono ajatus ja miksi ne pitäisi lopettaa. Tässä muutama niistä:

• They become an excuse for not talking for the rest of the year
• They may not be formally connected with promotions and salary negotiations – in reality everyone knows they are
• No one says what they really think

Samuel C. Culbert jatkaa aihetta Wall Street Journalissa mm. seuraavasti:

I believe it’s immoral to maintain the facade that annual pay and performance reviews lead to corporate improvement, when it’s clear they lead to more bogus activities than valid ones. Instead of energizing individuals, they are dispiriting and create cynicism. Instead of stimulating corporate effectiveness, they lead to just-in-case and cover-your-behind activities that reduce the amount of time that could be put to productive use. Instead of promoting directness, honesty and candor, they stimulate inauthentic conversations in which people cast self-interested pursuits as essential company activities.

The net result is a resource violation, and I think citations should be issued. If it’s a publicly held company, shareholder value gets decreased. If it’s a governmental organization, time is lost that could be spent in pursuit of the public good. And what participants learn in the process has more to do with how to survive than with meaningful self-development.

Hän tarjoaa vaihtoehdonkin: sen sijaan että arvioitaisiin mennyttä, suunniteltaisiinkin yhdessä tulevaa:

The preview structure keeps the focus on the future and what “I” need from you as “teammate and partner” in getting accomplished what we both want to see happen. It doesn’t happen only annually; it takes place each time either the boss or the subordinate has the feeling that they aren’t working well together.

Ainakin yksi yritys on todennut saman ja tehnyt radikaalin muutoksen toimintatavoissaan: Merrimac Pharmaseuticals on lopettanut käytännön:

So, why do companies spend so much time and money on trying to come up with new rating systems and fancy pay for performance plans? Actually, I have no idea. I’m hoping someone out there can help me on that one. But, this week is a milestone week in my career – I’ve officially decided to do something about it – I’ve propsed to my executive team that we eliminate our performance rating system and ditch this whole pay for performance idea.

Here’s why:

• We’re a company trying to develop innovative medicines for patients and we know that real innovation is often preceded by multiple failures that we can learn from and improve upon. By rating short term employee performance through semiannual reviews, we’re preventing employees from focusing on the big picture, taking long-term risks and being innovative. We want employees to fail early and often.
• A rating based system actually encourages a manager to give less frequent performance feedback to employees preventing real-time learning. That’s a bummer.
• Having a compensation and reward system based on the faulty premise that financial incentives improve performance, we are undermining powerful intrinsic employee motivation towards achieving our mission of curing cancer. These guys don’t need to be “bribed” to do a good job, they just want to be paid fairly and competitively.
• There’s no evidence that I’ve seen that convinces me that a performance rating system acutally improves performance.

Ihan mielellämme seuraamme, josko Andy Porter jakaa myöhemmin kokemuksiaan.