Recently I read an article that reminded me of one thing from my corporate life I loathed almost as much as putting my life in peril by driving to a soulless office park on an interstate highway: the annual performance review. What a phenomenal waste of time and energy and money, what a crime against humanity. Having not been forced to participate for the past three years, I can laugh at it, sort of, but seriously, all across the land millions upon millions of dollars are spent on this foolishness every year. It’s no wonder our economy has tanked.
As is often the case in office situations, the trouble trail leads straight to HR. The first year I worked at the PR agency, I was baffled by the fanfare generated by the performance reviews. First, the time spent on it was referred to as “the review season,” or, more ominously, “the review cycle.” The second thing was that everyone was required to attend a training session to learn how to fill out the self evaluation. I’ve seen nonsensical forms before, but I’d never known there to be a training to help fill them out. The reason training was offered was that the process was “new and improved.” Each and every of the seven years I worked at the agency, the self-evaluation process was “new and improved.” And performance reviews did indeed constitute a season, and a cycle. In PR, by the way, people say “cycle” when they’re too cool to say “time.” “Do you have cycles to take on this project?” in PR means “Do you have time?” in the rest of the world.
Even though the process was new and improved each year, it was always the same. It went like this: You agonize over your self evaluation, writing about your accomplishments and your shortcomings, cramming your careful rambling into formulaic parameters that in no way reflect your actual job. Then you beg your colleagues – the ones you think you’re on good terms with – to provide input on your review. You hand the self evaluation and the list of colleagues over to your manager, who manages to turn that into the main subject for at least three one-hour meetings. Then your manager goes to a series of meetings with his or her peers – they call this “talent review” – where each section of your review is discussed by people who sometimes are familiar with your work and just as often are not. In the meanwhile, you spend a considerable amount of time providing feedback to colleagues who have asked you to return the favor. I’m sorry, but mutual masturbation is the only way I can think to describe that process. Finally, as Spring is about to arrive, you sit down with your manager and spend a couple of hours going over every single section of the review, most of which has usually been completely rewritten. You’re told, almost as an aside, whether or not you’re “ready for promotion” and what your “salary adjustment” will be. Because this isn’t about money, of course: it’s about an opportunity to grow, and learn, and challenge yourself, and how your manager can help you succeed, because that’s what she’s there for, after all. It’s about more than the money, so much more. Then the process begins for setting goals for the following year, which is as drawn out as the review itself. Finally the whole thing is uploaded into some HR portal, you’re sent an automated confirmation mail and all is well until the leaves begin to fall and the days shorten, when it all begins, new and improved, of course.
I went through this foolishness seven times, and if you’re thinking that I’m bitter about not getting promoted, you’re thinking wrong: I was promoted four times. I was given raises that were almost embarrassing. But it scares me, looking back on it, the power that HR people and leadership coaches and process experts and all the other corporals in the war against independent thinking have amassed. Here’s the truth of the matter: Where I worked, whether or not people were getting promoted was decided before the invitations were sent out for the self-evaluation trainings. Those decisions were made on what I think are reasonable considerations, such as whether the person had a good relationship with the client, whether they got along with the boss, whether the team was already too top heavy to absorb yet another promotion. But it took four months and lots of expensive HR people and countless hours of group and individual agonizing to get from start to finish. The reason for that is simple: HR people write, interpret and enforce – or not – the rules and regulations, and, being the people who specialize in hiring and firing people, they wrote being untouchable into their own job descriptions. They’re to be applauded, really.
This is the third review season from which I’ve been blessedly spared, so when I read the article I actually laughed a bit. It’s clownishness at its best, but I do gasp from time to time and how quickly we comply when it comes to mandatory stupidity, me included. For perspective, I defer to my parents, whose work lives occurred a few decades earlier than my own. They didn’t do performance reviews, or if they did they didn’t take them seriously enough to ever mention them at home. That’s because in addition to being smarter than most people who make decisions these days – I never claimed to be free of bias, and I’m not about to – my parents had more important things to do. Like their jobs, and paying their bills, on time and in full, and, rather than leaving the task up to the television, raising their children.
As is often the case in office situations, the trouble trail leads straight to HR. The first year I worked at the PR agency, I was baffled by the fanfare generated by the performance reviews. First, the time spent on it was referred to as “the review season,” or, more ominously, “the review cycle.” The second thing was that everyone was required to attend a training session to learn how to fill out the self evaluation. I’ve seen nonsensical forms before, but I’d never known there to be a training to help fill them out. The reason training was offered was that the process was “new and improved.” Each and every of the seven years I worked at the agency, the self-evaluation process was “new and improved.” And performance reviews did indeed constitute a season, and a cycle. In PR, by the way, people say “cycle” when they’re too cool to say “time.” “Do you have cycles to take on this project?” in PR means “Do you have time?” in the rest of the world.
Even though the process was new and improved each year, it was always the same. It went like this: You agonize over your self evaluation, writing about your accomplishments and your shortcomings, cramming your careful rambling into formulaic parameters that in no way reflect your actual job. Then you beg your colleagues – the ones you think you’re on good terms with – to provide input on your review. You hand the self evaluation and the list of colleagues over to your manager, who manages to turn that into the main subject for at least three one-hour meetings. Then your manager goes to a series of meetings with his or her peers – they call this “talent review” – where each section of your review is discussed by people who sometimes are familiar with your work and just as often are not. In the meanwhile, you spend a considerable amount of time providing feedback to colleagues who have asked you to return the favor. I’m sorry, but mutual masturbation is the only way I can think to describe that process. Finally, as Spring is about to arrive, you sit down with your manager and spend a couple of hours going over every single section of the review, most of which has usually been completely rewritten. You’re told, almost as an aside, whether or not you’re “ready for promotion” and what your “salary adjustment” will be. Because this isn’t about money, of course: it’s about an opportunity to grow, and learn, and challenge yourself, and how your manager can help you succeed, because that’s what she’s there for, after all. It’s about more than the money, so much more. Then the process begins for setting goals for the following year, which is as drawn out as the review itself. Finally the whole thing is uploaded into some HR portal, you’re sent an automated confirmation mail and all is well until the leaves begin to fall and the days shorten, when it all begins, new and improved, of course.
I went through this foolishness seven times, and if you’re thinking that I’m bitter about not getting promoted, you’re thinking wrong: I was promoted four times. I was given raises that were almost embarrassing. But it scares me, looking back on it, the power that HR people and leadership coaches and process experts and all the other corporals in the war against independent thinking have amassed. Here’s the truth of the matter: Where I worked, whether or not people were getting promoted was decided before the invitations were sent out for the self-evaluation trainings. Those decisions were made on what I think are reasonable considerations, such as whether the person had a good relationship with the client, whether they got along with the boss, whether the team was already too top heavy to absorb yet another promotion. But it took four months and lots of expensive HR people and countless hours of group and individual agonizing to get from start to finish. The reason for that is simple: HR people write, interpret and enforce – or not – the rules and regulations, and, being the people who specialize in hiring and firing people, they wrote being untouchable into their own job descriptions. They’re to be applauded, really.
This is the third review season from which I’ve been blessedly spared, so when I read the article I actually laughed a bit. It’s clownishness at its best, but I do gasp from time to time and how quickly we comply when it comes to mandatory stupidity, me included. For perspective, I defer to my parents, whose work lives occurred a few decades earlier than my own. They didn’t do performance reviews, or if they did they didn’t take them seriously enough to ever mention them at home. That’s because in addition to being smarter than most people who make decisions these days – I never claimed to be free of bias, and I’m not about to – my parents had more important things to do. Like their jobs, and paying their bills, on time and in full, and, rather than leaving the task up to the television, raising their children.
