How many articles have you read about companies abandoning their annual reviews, Deloitte being the most vocal? Even Google recently came out saying they were abandoning their annual reviews, though it really sounds like they just reconstructed how they do them. Right now it seems fashionable to get rid of your reviews. In reality, the review itself is not the problem. The problem lies in the way companies conduct their reviews.
Pariveda will not be jumping on this bandwagon. Why not? Because our review process at Pariveda is continually designed to prevent the bad behavior many companies are experiencing today.
At Pariveda, we don’t force rank in our reviews to determine salary increases. Issues with force ranking for compensation is often the first reason companies mention when discussing what drove their decision to abandon annual reviews. This issue is not new to us; we knew that wasn’t effective and intentionally designed around it from the beginning, with our Expectations Framework, qualitative review structure, and compensation model. Another issue companies mention is that performance reviews don’t result in the increased overall company performance the company/leaders desire. Pariveda’s reviews are about the individual’s career growth. Our reviews guide employees on how to improve in certain areas so they can develop to their fullest potential. It’s not so we can perform better as a company. That is only a byproduct of having high-performing individuals working together at Pariveda.
One of the biggest complaints across companies is how time-consuming reviews are to write. Even at Pariveda, they require a heavy time investment. But it’s time that we believe is worth the investment. We absolutely seek ways to improve how we guide careers through our reviews and reduce the time spent to do so. We do it by improving scalability, getting feedback to our employees more often, and developing the coaching and mentoring capabilities of those writing the review. We continually ask ourselves, “how can we be better at reflecting and directing the careers of our Fins without sacrificing quality?”
It is in vogue to get rid of reviews right now. I would challenge each company to not throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead, understand what’s really broken with your company’s review process and fix it. Start with making the review about the individuals and how to improve their careers instead of a way to manage the business.
