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February 2010
Who Needs Performance Reviews?
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By Mark Fiala 
President, Organizational Architecture
I’ve read a few articles lately from people asking why we need to do performance reviews. Most of them are from the school of “HR is worthless, the people in HR are worthless, and they come up with stupid processes to justify their own existence”. I don’t think I am mischaracterizing their viewpoint.
Their point seems to be that supervisors don’t take these reviews seriously and therefore never provide meaningful feedback, and that the employee only sees it as a hoop to jump through to get their merit increase.
Even some of my clients have asked why they cannot just have a casual conversation with someone periodically to let them know how they’re doing, and what things they need to change to be better, just to make the process easier and more meaningful.
Believe me, I am all for giving meaningful feedback frequently, and I know that many review processes are cumbersome and don’t do anything to enhance performance.
But I do think reviews need to be done, and my belief was recently reinforced by a client who wanted to know if they should bother to do performance reviews if they were not in a position to give merit increases, due to the economy and their company’s performance.
My response was yes, and it needs to be a formal process. The reason is that giving employees feedback is important, and holding supervisors accountable to doing so is critical. But that isn’t the only reason reviews exist. I believe the main point of doing reviews is to know how your organization, as a whole, is performing, whether people are capable of doing more, of being promoted, and whether they possess the competencies required to be future leaders. It is an integral part of your succession planning and leadership development process. Supervisors and employees need to know that unless we formally assess performance, and then analyze the data, we have absolutely no idea if we have the talent to go forward as an organization.
So keep doing those reviews. HR, make the process easier on the supervisors who have to do them. And then do something with the information.
Need help sorting through this issue or others in your workforce strategy? Contact the professionals at Organizational Architecture today to see how they can help your organization grow.
 Organizational Architecture provides organizational design and human resources consulting services, including talent acquisition, compensation, benefits, training and compliance, to organizations in northeast Ohio and beyond. Mark Fiala is president of Organizational Architecture. Their website is www.oahumanresources.com. Organizational Architecture is an independent, strategic partner of Apple Growth Partners.
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