Am I Trying to Hard?

Friday, January 28, 2005
Performance reviews are due today. I had mine done several weeks ago as I believe in putting a lot of thought into them.

The thing is that I seem to be in the minority. I always give full and detailed explanations for my ratings for each of my employees. Whether I'm going to evaluate them as superior, average, or below average I give my reasoning for each in full detail and with relevant examples of why I view them as such. I sit down with each of them for about 30 minutes or so to fully discuss it and give them a chance to give me any feedback and to also allow them to evaluate me.

Now, at least in my company, I seem to be in the clear minority. Most reviews give one or two lines for an explanation like "He performs his job well" and leave it at that. I know a lot of managers that never sit down with their people to discuss it.

How about you other people? What are your reviews like? What do you prefer them to be or do you even care?

3 comments:

Kat said...

we have to do self-evaulations, which i think is a load of crap because it lets our managers get away without evaluating us. :(

Anonymous said...

Terrence,
The slackers always want to bring others down to their level. They know they are not doing enough but they hope you will feel like you're doing too much. Just keep doing what you are doing. Your employees are lucky.
Our reviews use a vague rating form - the employee gives a copy to four people to fill out and then does one him/herself. The four are averaged then compared to the self one. then the person has a review with a firm partner and one other person. In my experience the evaluation forms are ignored (except for specific comments) and people mostly concentrate on a review on the person's specific assignments.
-John

David Cho said...

That's pretty good, Terrence. I had most of my managers in my pre-GNP days do just that.

Then I met KC (you know who I'm refering to). Most moronic performance reviews I've ever had.