Scrap Performance Appraisals - Part 1

A friend of mine, who is a HR department head, challenged me to come up with the alternative to performance appraisal systems. She, like many of you, has heard me say time and again that they are a waste of time and most often counter productive. And boy are they costly!!!
Cha-ching goes the corporate cash register (the song "Money" stuck in my head).

She asked me to create the alternative so that her company could be the pilot site. That´s an intriguing thought, but not something I had on my nearterm project list.

But it´s an intriguing idea.......not on my list.......but interesting......

So here is what I am going to do. I have decided to dedicate this week to being

Escape Performance Appraisal Week at Management Craft!

Each day this week, I will share another aspect of this issue or build on ideas. I would love it if you chimed in and shared your thoughts and questions along the way. I am not going to publish the agenda for the week because I do not know where I am going to go with this, I just know it is too big for one blog post. I am employing Evelyn´s "write into it"?? approach, focusing on open thinking and incorporating your thoughts.

The topic of performance appraisals is interwoven with the topics of motivation, incentives, competition, and rewards. So our conversation this week might venture into some or all of these areas.

Today I am going to start by doing a bit of an information dump that sets up the situation:

Here are a couple articles from Alfie Kohn, author of Punished By Rewards, a book on my must read list for managers. For those of you who are parents, Kohn is a must read and he has lots of stuff focused on education.

Challenging Behaviorist Dogma: Myths About Money and Motivation

Another Look at Workplace Incentives

Here is a review of the book, Abolishing Performance Appraisals. I agree with Ian that this is a book all HR folks should have and read. Middle and senior managers should read this too!

And here is an online article I found by Fred Nichols called,

Don't Redesign Your Company's Performance Appraisal System, Scrap It! A Look at the Costs and Benefits of Performance Appraisal Systems. I do not know Fred, but there are some interesting points in this article.

And of course, Performance Appraisals were #3 on Deming´s list of 7 Deadly Diseases getting in the way of our pursuit for quality.

If you are expecting an objective journalistic article about the pros and cons of performance appraisals here, you have come to the wrong place. I don't think that would be a good use of time or space. Most people in their heart know that appraisals don't work, but the question is always what to do instead. The purpose of this series is to explore the "scrap appraisals"?? point of view and the potential alternatives. All week, I will go deep into this one topic.

That said, I welcome comments from any point of view!