Food for thought as firms serve up performance reviews

Before ditching performance reviews, law firms should assess what they are really trying to achieve through such feedback processes and put in place measures to ensure they are effective, writes Leonie Green.

At this time of year, many firms are getting ready for performance reviews – often with dread, sometimes with frustration (do I really have to do this?) and almost always with the wrong intention.

There are good reasons why performance reviews, of the ‘tick the box’ and ‘fill in that form’ variety, are being challenged by employees and people managers alike. Some firms are saying goodbye to the stock standard approach in return for a new model. As Georgia Murch explains in her book Fixing Feedback, there are numerous reasons why the current approach to performance reviews may not be ideal. She lists the following, which may sound familiar:

• the feedback is stale or hidden;
• they are full of surprises, and not the good kind;
• there is little room for the ‘real truth’;
• they highlight the negative rather than building strength;
• they are too focused on scoring and tick-boxing;
• they are too time-consuming; and
• they are stiff and boring.

Focus on intention

Sound familiar? So how do we make the shift to a model of feedback that serves our business and gets results? Well, let us start with checking our intention. What are we actually trying to achieve? What is the point of a performance review? Let us consider for a minute that feedback is essential to improvement and, for want of a better structure, the performance review has been seen as a way of ensuring that feedback is given and improvement can be tracked over time. That is all – just a structure to assist with feedback.

But feedback is so much more than a performance review; feedback, effective feedback, that actually does improve performance is the feedback that happens outside of the review period – it is the week-by-week conversations, it is the daily interactions, it is the way we approach our employees and their work.

Feedback, in all its forms, is part of life. Consider for a moment the cooking of the evening meal. Do we every six months sit down and look at everything we have cooked and consumed during the six months and decide on our best meals that we want to replicate again and again, and the meals that we never want to see again? No, of course not (unless I am the odd one out here!). We give and receive the feedback at the time; for example, we might taste the meal and say:

• “Wow, that’s amazing, I want to eat this again soon”, or;
• “Hmm, that does not seem like it was worth the effort; it feels like it’s missing an element, maybe next time we add garlic”, or;
• “Wow, that is a meal that did not turn out as planned and I’m not sure I can eat what’s on my plate.”

Feedback in the workplace should be no different. It should be given with the intention of improving what happens in the next hour and the next day. You cannot wait six months to tell someone never to cook that meal again … you risk eating that meal every week for the next six months. Likewise, in an office setting you risk prolonging problems.

Keep or discard?

So do we stick with performance reviews, throw them out or do something in-between? Well, if the original intention of the performance review was to ensure feedback was being given, let us consider first up whether or not feedback is actually being given. What is currently happening between each six or 12-month round of reviews? Here is your checklist for considering whether or not you are ready to rip up the current process entirely:

• Is feedback given regularly – that is, are there weekly or fortnightly one-on-one conversations between people managers and team members that are based on what is working well and where they can improve?
• Is feedback given with the intention of improvement?
• Is feedback given when it is due – that is, people say ‘well done’, or ‘let’s work through what’s not working’ at the time it occurs, rather than weeks later?
• Are the relationships strong enough to handle a difficult conversation about performance that is not where it needs to be, which results in an immediate improvement by the employee?
• Is the firm’s data indicating that performance, overall, is meeting expectations?

If one or more of these elements is lacking, then start there. Work on improving the feedback culture of your firm first, before you move away from a structure that might be the only clear feedback employees currently receive. Remember that the performance review process was designed originally to ensure that feedback happened. It is imperfect, often flawed, and can be incredibly time-consuming, but the feedback component is critical. So make sure your firm has a mechanism for giving feedback; review the process and improve it before you throw it out; and, importantly, focus your efforts on improving the feedback that occurs outside of the formal review, as that is where performance really happens.

Just as importantly, check the approach to feedback – whether it is an annual performance review or whether it is the timely feedback that is given straight after a metaphoric meal. Start with the positive – and feed the positive before you consider the negative.

In the book Positivity: Ground-Breaking Research to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive, Barbara Fredrickson suggests a positivity ratio of 3:1 – describing it as a “tipping point predicting whether people languish or flourish”.  So before you say, urrrgh, this meal is revolting … consider when you last gave some positive feedback – if your ratio is out, then focus first on getting the ratio back to the ‘positive’ tipping point before launching into a tirade of constructive feedback, or risk your feedback being ineffective at best and damaging to performance at worst.

So what is the point? Performance. Improvement in performance over time. At a personal level and a firm level.  Feedback is essential to performance, and we cannot improve without it. So let us find new ways of working that enable us to give the feedback that will see our people and our firms flourish, not languish.

Leonie Green is a co-founder and director of the Corvus Group, a workplace and legal advisory firm with more than 20 years of senior legal and HR experience working in Australian and international companies. She practised as an employment and industrial relations lawyer for a number of years prior to moving into management roles in industrial relations, shared services and human resources.  She can be contacted via email at leonie@corvusga.com.au.