When Performance Reviews Underperform

One big breakthrough was to make sure that each employee really understood what mattered most in his or her performance. Pittard came to realize that almost everyone really does want to do a great job -- but if he didn't make sure each person knew exactly what the company considered to be a great job, then each individual would make up their own criteria. Guaranteed these would not be best for the company.

Without a clear understanding of how their performances would be evaluated, employees were coming to performance reviews believing that they had done a great job, but when Pittard looked at their performance and saw that it was out of alignment with company goals, it was a lose-lose situation. The company wasn't getting the performance it needed and employees were told that their performance was not good despite doing what they truly believed was a good job. This can be terribly demoralizing to an employee.

Eventually, Pittard learned how to avoid this situation by providing high-quality documentation of specific performance criteria to each employee. He made sure employees understood and agreed with the specific criteria for their performance, and he faithfully followed those documents as the measure for their performance when review time came around.

A carefully crafted performance criteria document should cover the full spectrum of what is needed in the employee's performance. The foundation of a performance criteria document should be the company's values and goals. When employees know their performance will be evaluated by how well they maintain those values and goals, they become very serious about adhering to them. It is no small job to identify the company's goals and values, and it's a very good idea to have the employees contribute to this identification.

In a nutshell, performance criteria documents provide a very strong mechanism for nurturing and reinforcing the company's values and goals while providing very clear guidelines for each individual employee's performance.

Unlike job descriptions, each employee's performance criteria will have a lot in common with everyone else's because they are all based upon the company's values and goals. But each position's specific performance criteria should vary according to their role. Different roles will have varying emphases on the different values.

For example, Pittard explained that one might perceive reviewing a graphic designer's work as a rather subjective process, and it probably would be unless you break it down into discrete components. Here are some aspects of a designer's work that can be addressed separately: use of color, typography, composition, originality, adherence to project briefs, etc. Pittard remembers one designer whose work was very good, but by deliberately evaluating discrete aspects of her work he was able to point out that she was using a very similar color palette over and over. Thus Pittard was able to provide a helpful insight to improve her future performance. Since Pittard was using a comprehensive performance criteria document to guide the review, his criticism of her use of color was taken in a larger context in which she had many strengths. This helped her accept his criticism as constructive feedback, and therefore use it to improve her work.

A point I can't stress strongly enough is that performance criteria documents should be detailed so that both manager and subordinate will be able to recognize success when it is achieved.

For example, one might perceive reviewing a graphic designer's work as a rather subjective process, and it probably would be unless you break it down into discrete components. Here are some aspects of a designer's work that can be addressed separately: use of color, typography, composition, originality, adherence to project briefs, etc. I remember one designer whose work was very good, but by deliberately evaluating discrete aspects of her work I was able to point out that she was using a very similar color palette over and over. Thus I was able to provide a helpful insight to improve her future performance. Since I was using a comprehensive performance criteria document to guide the review, my criticism of her use of color was taken in a larger context in which she had many strengths. This helped her accept my criticism as constructive feedback, and therefore use it to improve her work.

Another thing Pittard noticed from his days of doing not-so-great performance reviews is that without detailed points for evaluation, there tended to be a lack of balance in the reviews. There always seemed to be too much focus on one area while other areas were neglected. The employee's total performance needs to be considered, and a detailed performance criteria document does just that.