Episode 40: Tips to Make Performance Reviews Beneficial to Both Employers and Employees

Welcome to the Workplace, a podcast by Cal Chamber. I'm Erica Frank, Cal Chamber's General counsel and Executive Vice President. Today on the podcast, one of our favorites is back. Jennifer Shaw of the Shaw Law Group is joining us once again and we are delighted to have you back, Jennifer.

I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Well, Jen, today we have a great topic to discuss. As we approach the end of the calendar year, many of us are facing the daunting task of writing or receiving an annual performance review. This process or this ritual can be very helpful for both employers and employees if it is done right. Or it can be useless and even painful if it's done poorly.

Agreed.

So before we delve into that subject today, I thought it might be useful to get some perspective on performance reviews by listening to a clip from the TV show the Office.

Good work, Stanley. Great performance review. Stanley in the house, everybody.

Woo.

Angela, your turn. I actually look forward to performance reviews. I did the youth beauty pageant circuit and I enjoyed that quite a bit. I really enjoy being judged. I believe I hold up very well to even severe scrutiny.

Michael.

Yeah.

Jan's on the phone for you.

Oh, Angela, you were totally satisfactory this year.

Poor, sweet Angela.

You know what, there's always lessons to be learned from Michael Scott, isn't there?

Yeah. And the Office is such an amazing example of everything that you shouldn't do. But I love that the writers were always thinking about what actually happens because this is not so far fetched, this episode.

No. So let's take it from the top. So the scene opens up with Michael Scott walking stairs, Stanley out to the room of cubicles saying, way to go, way to go. What's the problem with that?

Well, here's what's interesting. One of the adages that you hear a lot is, well, you should praise in public and you should criticize in private. So in that way, Michael got it right. Let's tell Stanley he did a great review. Let's make sure that everybody knows he had a great review. But of course, it's not really meant to apply to performance evaluations. Right. These are things that employees are worried about, they fret about, they look forward to. So it's not something that they want to be advertised. Also, we don't know what really happened in that meeting with Stanley. So when you have Michael come out and say in front of the whole group, oh, it was marvelous. You did an amazing job, Stanley. I'm paraphrasing, of course. You end up with a situation. What if he gave him feedback in that Meeting. Now Stanley gets to say, oh, you told everybody I was amazing. So there are so many issues with that from the very beginning. And now the next person is uncomfortable, as we saw, she says she stands up all the criticism, but we'll see.

What ends up happening is now it's like, oh, gosh, is it my turn? And I'm going to be honest with you, this happens in my own law firm. We do evaluations over a two day period. I write them during Thanksgiving break, which I did this Thanksgiving break. We deliver them so we can give everyone their increases and their bonuses for the year. Everyone knows what we're doing. Like you don't get called in with Jen and Ronnie just to chit chat. It's because it's review time and everybody knows it's review time. So I struggle with that myself about, well, should we be doing this off site? Is there another way to do it? But obviously that was a nice look at what we shouldn't do from the top.

Well, and poor Stanley. I mean, Michael Scott says, Stanley's in the house. Stanley may not like that attention placed upon him.

Well, that's the other thing. When you're Michael Scott, you think everyone's always talking about you. That's that they love you, that you're amazing. Most of us aren't like that. Most of us would prefer to sort of melt into the woodwork if we possibly could. Particularly in a situation like this where our boss is giving us some feedback that other people may be aware of. So I really think that managers and supervisors need to take a step back and really consider how something feels from the employee's perspective. And obviously this can be high level employees. Right, right. You know, the CFO gets a review too. Right. So.

I think there needs to be a little more thought given to. All right, how are we going to communicate this? What's the environment? Where are we doing it? Who's going to be aware of what's happening? All those factors are critical to doing, as you said, an effective performance review. Because otherwise, frankly, don't do them.

Exactly. And I think seeing Angela, which I love because here she is, I love them. I love getting criticism. Not everybody is like that.

No. And of course the review, the quote review score that he gave her. Right. Totally satisfactory, I think is what it was.

Yes.

Well, satisfactory to me is like, I got a C minus, I'm barely passing. What do I need to do to save my job? Satisfactory to somebody else's. Well, that's fine then. I did what they expected of me. Right.

The other thing too that I wanted to point out that I noticed too is Stanley came out from Michael Scott's office. So the presumption is there was this long meeting discussion. Who knows what was said behind closed doors. Angela, who's excited and geared to go, she probably is a type A high performer, knows she's going to get praise, loves to get praise, and she gets a, you were satisfactory and the door slammed in her face.

That's exactly right.

So what's the disparity there? You've got one employee who's receiving a long detailed review, we assume, we presume right. And the other who just gets satisfactory with the door slammed in front of the entire workplace.

And especially when you add to that the fact that the word he used wasn't, you're totally awesome this year. You were satisfactory.

You were satisfactory. And for someone like Angela, that probably was.

That's an F minus. I was gonna say yes.

She was waiting for the A and she did not get it.

She did not get it.

Which brings to mind too some of the concerns with performance reviews that yes, while if done properly, they're extremely helpful, if they're not, they are not going to cast an accurate or fair light on the employee and how the employee performs.

Well, I think that's right. We have a lot of clients who don't do performance reviews and that's fine. There are a couple things that I think we need to think about. First of all, when you do a review, your scale has to make sense. I would prefer that there were no numbers, there were no words like outstanding, excellent, satisfactory, less than expected. Why don't you just write somebody a memo of what they did during the year? And one of the things that people forget about is you're also supposed to be telling them about the positive things they did. So even if you have an employee who's really had some opportunities this year, they've done something right. So the idea is to try to say, okay, look, this is a snapshot of the entire year. Of course, you better be talking to your employee every day about what's been going on. Right. The idea that we just gather everything up and put it in this little 20 minute performance meeting is really not only anticlimactic but very ineffective. Can create legal issues for you either way. So what I tell folks when they ask me my impressions of should we have a performance evaluation? I say, look, if you're gonna do it and you're gonna do it right, it can be really helpful, including down the road in litigation, when you have to show contemporaneously you gave someone negative feedback that they were aware of. But if you're just gonna do it sort of halfway and half heartedly, the way we just saw Michael, do better not to do it at all.

And I like what you said as far as waiting until the end of the year to package something in a nice 20 minute conversation as opposed to continuing to do your job as a supervisor and manager and mentoring and talking with your employee throughout the year.

That's right.

Praising when appropriate and also addressing improvements when appropriate.

That's right. You know, one of the biggest problems I think we have in the workplace is many managers and supervisors are promoted because they're good at their substantive work. They are not good at talking to people. They are not good at coaching and mentoring and developing. So what you end up having is people who don't know how to even have that conversation. And believe me, we all have growth opportunities in that area. It's very difficult when you have, quote, real work to do, to also take a step back and think about, all right, how am I going to get this person to where they need to be? But that is the essence of our jobs as supervisors and managers. We are coaching, we are developing, we are, we are hoping, creating. We're hoping to create an employee who's better than we are.

Right.

That's the idea. So if you don't know how to do that, doing an annual performance review is not where it's at. You need to go learn how to give the feedback on a regular basis, positive and negative.

So for those that are listening right now going, oh, my gosh, I have to give one tomorrow or I'm receiving one tomorrow. What are some key takeaways that we can provide to our audience members so they don't have an office experience?

Well, there are a couple things that I think we need to focus on. Number one is when you are reviewing someone's work performance, you are not reviewing the person. Okay. And this sounds like, well, gosh, that's. We're dancing on the head of a pin. No, we're not. Because you can tend to make it very personal. I don't feel like you were committed this year. I feel like you weren't as loyal as you have been in prior years. You didn't seem to be as much of a team player. What does all that mean? None of us have any idea. So one of the things that I think we have to think about if we're the deliverer of the evaluation is what are we delivering what information are we conveying? Are we using language that's gonna be mutually understandable? Right. What are we talking about? And I think people use those labels because they're shortcuts. And it's so tempting to say, oh, she's just lazy. Cause she never gets, you know, she never meets her deadlines. Well, why doesn't she meet the deadlines? Are the deadlines too short? Is she not getting the support she needs? Is she really not good at time management? Well, until they're gone, they're here. And that means we owe it to these employees to do our very best to coach and mentor them and get them where they need to be. And if they can't perform, then they should be gone. They shouldn't be subjected to constant, repeated criticism when there's no improvement. Now, if you're the person receiving the review, this is always hard for me. Take a deep breath. Let all the information come out. Don't respond in haste. Take a moment. Let it all come over you. Ask for a copy. You're entitled to a copy. If they want you to sign it, all you're signing is that you received it. Don't panic. Get the review. Think about it over the next couple of days, and then you can decide if you're in a situation where you. You have a question about, you know, about what somebody said or. My very first review when I was a lawyer, I will never forget it. This amazing lawyer at Oreck partner led the office. All I wanted him to do was be proud of me. And they collected information from all of these different folks about my performance. And he handed me this document, which was like a tally sheet that I learned later, showed that I had done very well. All he told me about was this one supposed research slip up, which it turned out he was thinking about somebody else.

Oh, gosh.

Like when I came back two days later and said, oh, my gosh, I'm just mortified by this. He said, oh, my gosh, it wasn't you. Okay? I mean, not criticism. It's just people get busy and we make those mistakes. But here I am 30 years later, I remember it.

You still feel it.

You still feel it now.

I mean, do these performance reviews have to be these lengthy, drawn out processes?

No.

I know that if you Google performance reviews, you will receive a lot of information.

Well, everybody has a tool, right? They want to sell you a tool.

They want to sell you a tool. And you know, as far as tools go or processes, as a couple of closing remarks, is it good to have a few Key metrics that you're going to use to evaluate the employee. I know you don't like scales outstanding, satisfactory, but what are the alternatives?

Well, that's a great question. And let me just say that part of the problem with evaluations is they have to be tailored to the job. So if your job is a salesperson and you've got quotas to meet, a lot of your review is going to be based on whether you met your quotas. If you're a legal secretary, you don't have a quota. Your review is going to be based on do the clients think that you're kind to them? Do you do good work? Do you proof.

Your output? So one of the things that I think a lot of employers want is a one size fits all. And actually to have a performance review work, it needs to be tailored to the job.

You know, Jennifer, it almost makes me think that you go back to that job description.

Absolutely. And I was about to say you start with the job description. That's how you craft the review. And if you need to update the job description, you update the job description.

Which actually is the perfect time because we're always talking about employers needing and supervisors to annually review and update the job description. Absolutely. So what a perfect time to do so well.

And I think it's a perfect time also if you're the person who's delivering that review to get the feedback of the person with whom you're meeting, what's working for you, what duties are you doing that are not contained in this job description? I know people don't like this whole self evaluation process, but I have our folks just send me an email, tell me what your greatest accomplishments are this year, what are your greatest disappointments this year? So I have some context of what's important to them that is really a critical part of how we can approach performance evaluations for what they're supposed to be. We're improving our employees performance, their ability to deliver and the overall quality of the workplace. It's not meant to be. How many times do I have to give someone a bad review before I can fire them?

It's not a disciplinary riot. No.

And if you're going to discipline, do it separately.

Right. Do it before the performance review.

For sure.

Jennifer, as always, it was a pleasure. Thank you for joining us today and thank all of you for joining us on the workplace. Please comment, share and subscribe to Cal chambers podcast@calchamber.com.