Performance Reviews: The Debate Continues

Earlier this week I wrote a post about an interesting debate I found on BusinessWeek’s The Debate Room about the value of performance reviews. The debate continues.  You Can’t Afford to Skip Reviews, by Burton Goldfield, President and CEO of TriNEt, argues that performance reviews are much to valuable to skip.

They provide an important opportunity to revisit your company’s real priorities, give positive reinforcement to your star players and put necessary pressure on underperformers.

It’s when Goldfield highlights the situation at EDL Consulting that made me think a little more about the value of performance reviews. EDL had set a goal “to have more direct business with clients, rather than work indirectly with third parties.”

Generally speaking, at EDL, a goal like that was made and then forgotten. Once we became more rigorous about performance management, we had an aha moment. We recognized how well we were doing when our goals were truly top of mind.

I found this really interesting. A strong performance management system helped keep employees focused. In fact it was so successful that EDL increased their direct business from 30%-60%. Take that anti-performance review…the debate continues.