Read an interesting article recently concerning the purpose of having performance reviews.

First of all, as a boss or manager, do you even do performance reviews for employees? If not, you really should.

This author was rather skeptical of how performance reviews are accomplished overall. As he put it, the scenario of annual performance reviews often goes like this:

“I have nine reviews I have to get done by the end of the month. I feel more pressure about completing the review than I feel an obligation to the employees to let them know how they are really doing. How I can help them.”

This same author said, since many contractor owners, as well as everyone else, probably do only one review per employee a year, chances are one bases judgment about the employee’s performance on the last two months or so. If the employee happened to have done something wrong during that two-month stretch, chances are one will give that employee a poor review. Just the same, if the employee did everything good during this last two-month period, chances are that employee will get a good review.

The author asked: A good review…even if they performed poorly throughout most of the year? Is that really justice?

It was suggested that a boss and/or all managers spend a minimum of 30 minutes per month per employee, discussing performance and progress with each. That really is all fine and dandy, especially since the purpose of a performance review is to let each employee know where he/she stands, how each are doing, and to determine what the company can do to help him/her become the best at what he/she does.

I agree with the author in that a performance review was not created to build a case for termination, nor was it designed to praise an employee. Rather, a rating system was developed by the human resource department to be used as a guideline to keep the company ship moving in the right direction, collectively and individually. But 30 minutes for each employer? Each month? Yikes!

I’m just curious how contractors, in general, handle performance reviews. Provide a post to this blog, OK? We can all learn from each other.