JUST FINISHED-UP YOUR ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REVIEWS?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Were they painful? Were they productive?

Last November I did a post titled, Is No Performance Review An Improvement Over What You Do Now? Another one, for your reference is Streamlined, Digital Performance Evaluations – Halogen featuring Andrea Ballard of Peterson Sullivan.

Perhaps you have read the recent article in CCH Practice Management Forum by Valant and Hustad titled, Performance Reviews: Moving from Painful to Productive? The authors cite a book by Culbert and Rout, Get Rid of the Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing – - and Focus on What Really Matters. Culbert and Rout explain that reviewing performance is important, but that employees deserve evaluations they can trust, not reviews cloaked in pretense and procedure that make all those involved uncomfortable.

I find that all this is very real inside CPA firms. Many managers/partners are just burned out with going through the annual process and the recipients have learned that no real, concrete, constructive actions result from the process.

The authors of the article confirm my feelings….. the managers (in a CPA firm the managers and partners) are not doing a very good job.

Nothing is sadder than to see someone… who thought they had been performing acceptably, discover they are suddenly unemployed when all they had done was repeat the same behavior and performance that had been acceptable in the past. – - Does this quote from the article sound like something that might happen in your firm?

Here are the four practical steps offered by Valant and Hustad (be sure to read the entire article if you are a subscriber):

Managers must clearly state and quantify their expectations.
Commitment must be gained from each direct report to meet the manager’s expectations.
Performance reviews must be conducted quarterly, allowing the manager to become the coach, not the annual judge, jury and executioner.
Compensation must be linked directly to performance.

Now is the time to set the stage for the coming performance year. Do you need to change/modify your performance evaluation system? If you need assistance or just need to brainstorm, give me a call or send an email.