Who hates annual employee performance reviews? Everyone, that’s who.

Employees hate them, managers hate them. HR probably hates them.

There are plenty of studies and articles and trends to back this up. Like this one.  And this one. Publications like The New York Times and The New Yorker are spreading the word. And there’s even a book about how much performance reviews suck. 

So, what’s the solution? Resigning ourselves to stick with something that doesn’t work? There has to be a better way. 

I’ve experimented with many different ways to conduct performance reviews. Formal. Informal. Annual. Quarterly. Ad hoc. Paper. Online. 360 reviews. You name it, I’ve probably done it. 

The problem with performance reviews has been written about extensively (as evident by the links above). The bottom line is that they are:

* Not agile and therefore not aligned with the rhythms or realities of the modern workplace. * Often not specifically relevant to the employee’s role or their actual contribution. * Too time-consuming & too cumbersome to administer, so managers and staff just go through the motions. * Potentially damaging to the employee/manager relationship unless the manager is highly skilled at giving the right feedback and coaching for improvements.  * Not consistently effective at getting the outcomes you want from the employee. * Easily buried away in some folder and quickly forgotten about just a few days after the review (i.e. not relevant to the realities of work).

My solution: Just do away with the annual review. It’s a relic. 

My biggest problem with annual performance reviews as the primary formal feedback mechanism with an employee is that workplace goals, strategies and tactics change too frequently for a yearly review to be relevant.

People also ebb and flow too frequently for an annual review to be relevant. Yes, employees have certain characteristics that don’t change much over time, but they also have so much that can impact their situational work performance—from the specific nature of their most recent projects and responsibilities, what is happening in their personal life, even what’s happening within the walls of the office or the company culture. I am not saying an A player drops to a C player. Individual performance is nuanced and never really static. 

If you want to throw traditional performance reviews out the window and take a more agile approach, here is what I found worked best for me:

Frequent, regularly scheduled meetings

Meet with each of your team members regularly, without fail. 

When you approach reviews as something that should be agile, the nature of the meetings will shift over time. Sometimes one-on-one meetings will be perfunctory. Sometimes you will dive deep into issues or trends you are seeing. Sometimes it all be a ‘roll up your sleeves’ working session to hash so...