{"id":967,"date":"2013-04-01T06:49:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T13:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.constructonomics.com\/blog\/?p=967"},"modified":"2020-02-14T04:32:29","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T11:32:29","slug":"the-elusive-employee-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/01\/the-elusive-employee-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Elusive Employee Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ahhh, the employee review. Everybody’s favorite time of the year. You get to sit down with your boss and your employees and have a\"employee_review\" little chat. It’s that time when your boss digs up information from the employee time tracker app<\/a> to ascertain how much time you’ve dedicated to the company. It usually ends up being the most uncomfortable conversation you have all year, but also probably the most productive.<\/p>\n

For some of the construction companies I’ve worked for, employee reviews are less common than a visible passing of Halley’s Comet.<\/p>\n

*Just for record, I actually saw Halley’s comet back in 1986 when I was 8 years old.\u00a0 I’ll never forget it. It looked like a red streak going across the sky but very high up. It appeared to be at the same elevation as an airplane that is flying at its highest altitude. However, it was quite a bit further away and probably some kind of distance that involves light-years. But Halley’s comet is actually the only comet visible to the naked eye that can be seen twice in one lifetime. It will make it’s return in mid 2061. You all are invited to the cook-out.* <\/em><\/p>\n

But I understand.\u00a0 It’s a very tough discussion to have.\u00a0 And it also gives employees an opportunity to fire back at management, which I’m sure management isn’t too fond of, and I don’t really blame them.\u00a0 Like I said, it’s a tough discussion.\u00a0 So there has to be effort on both sides of the table in order for the review to be ultimately effective.\u00a0 They should not be about mudslinging or missile launching.\u00a0 It’s about improvement and also about recognition.\u00a0 In fact, there is no reason why an employee review cannot include a slew of good things that are going on at work.\u00a0 And this positive talk (as opposed to negative talk) is just that, very positive. I’ve had teachers and professors of business and leadership that recommend three positives for every one negative.\u00a0 I think this would be tough to meet, but an ambitious goal nonetheless and a testament to how important positive interaction is at an employee review.<\/p>\n

However there are other members of academia that are not too fond of the employee review.\u00a0 Samuel A. Culbert, who is a professor of business at UCLA, wrote a book titled, “Get Rid Of The Employee Review!”\u00a0 (And yes, there is in fact an exclamation point in the title.)<\/p>\n

And I will admit that I did not yet read the book, however I do want to. Excepts from his NPR interview<\/a> give a little explanation, and it appears that he doesn’t like the employee review because management and labor use the review as an opportunity to manipulate the other party and improve their position in the organization.<\/p>\n

I can see how this could very easily happen, but more education and understanding about the reasons and benefits of employee reviews could very easily improve the productivity of the discussion.<\/p>\n

\n

Culbert says, when workers undergo a review, “They’re going to talk about all their successes \u2014 it becomes total baloney.”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And management participates in the charade, as well, he says: “The boss already has heard [from] his boss what they want to pay the guy, or the woman. So they come up with a review that’s all backwards.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong: Reviewing performance is good; it should happen every day. But employees need evaluations they can believe, not the fraudulent ones they receive. They need evaluations that are dictated by need, not a date on the calendar. They need evaluations that make them strive to improve, not pretend they are perfect.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Based on this excerpt, it appears rather clearly that Professor Culbert is looking for more of a change in the way reviews are performed rather than getting rid of them altogether.\u00a0 This is despite the use of the exclamation point in the title.<\/p>\n

While this may be contrary to popular belief, I actually sit very much in the middle of the labor vs. management debate.\u00a0 I think employees should be proactive, self-motivated, and as self sufficient as they can be.\u00a0 However, I also believe that management has to make a concerted effort at putting employees in positions in which they can be successful along with addressing performance issues in the early stages.\u00a0\u00a0 Just like cancer, early detection is the key to tackling performance problems at work. This has at least been my experience. I honestly believe that most people want to do well and would take the opportunity to do better if given the ability and opportunity.\u00a0 I know, I know, everybody knows about those employees that want to do nothing and still get paid.\u00a0 I think these folks are in the minority.\u00a0\u00a0 And I also know that the minority often ruins things for the majority, but let’s try to remove ourselves from that kind of counterproductive thinking for a bit.<\/p>\n

Let’s improve the lines of communication between employees and management and mix it up with positive reinforcement as well as constructive criticism.\u00a0 So when Halley’s comet comes by the next time, we’ll all have better careers to look back on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahhh, the employee review. Everybody’s favorite time of the year. You get to sit down with your boss and your employees and have a little chat. It’s that time when your boss digs up information from the employee time tracker app<\/a> to ascertain how much time you’ve dedicated to the company. It usually ends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1911,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions\/1911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}