We loved the title of this blogpost, which appeared in Fast Company recently.
The central point was that if reviewer and reviewee only meet once or twice a year, each one dreads the whole process. It’s much better to provide feedback on how one’s direct reports are doing during the year in monthly or quarterly chunks, even if you scribble something positive or negative on a stickynote and put it into the person’s personnel file (we assume you at least keep personnel files….in this day and age one can’t afford, literally, not to.)
Jack Welch, of GE fame, once said that he spent about 1/3 of his time on personnel matters, and a large chunk of it should have been on items for reviews. GE had a vaunted leadership development system, although with their current stock price, one has to wonder how well it’s working.
Another fascinating item in this blogpost was that reviewer and reviewee both agreed that they looked forward to more, not less, frequent feedback.
Here’s the link to the post: http://www.fastcompany.com/3004/why-year-end-reviews-are-a-big-fat-waste-time