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After many years of watching employees and managers struggle with performance reviews, I finally started re-thinking the process and trying to change it.

It was hard for employees at my then-employer to take the process seriously. Senior leaders dismissed the feedback and performance reviews completely. Many VPs and above had not received a review or feedback in years. They had no idea how they were viewed by the organization or what they could do to improve (their only success metric: making their financial targets). The process ended up making people feel anxious instead of helping them understand their performance and feel motivated to do great work.

Thank goodness the Open Feedback Movement is gaining traction. Thanks to Rypple, there is now an alternative for employees and employers. Management gurus including Jeffery Pfeffer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, are bringing this topic to light. In his Business Week article, Low Grades for Performance Reviews, Mr. Pfeffer says what many have been thinking for a long time.

Open feedback has to become a part of the company culture. If employee have been “punished” for giving feedback, or leaders think it’s a joke, it’s nearly impossible for open feedback to happen. The cultural shift needs to start at the top, but will quickly permeate the organization if encouraged and supported. It will also help improve individual, team and company performance.

Things to think about:

1. Open feedback needs to be modeled by Senior Leaders and ingrained into the culture.
2. Regular and productive 1:1s are essential in managing performance and establishing a trusting relationship with your team.
3. No one comes to work to sabotage the company. If you’re not doing something well, you usually don’t know or understand the implications. You’ll never improve if you don’t know what you need to work on.
4. It’s all in the delivery. Giving feedback for improvement is hard. You need to deliver the message in a supportive way and make sure you have data to back it up. Focus on how the behavior or competency deficit is impacting the organization?
5. Don’t make performance management a “check off the box”. Your employees are your most important resource. They deserve to understand what they are doing well and where they can improve.
6. Don’t over engineer things. Formula’s, ranking, etc are not the point of feedback. It is about the conversation.
7. Let employees “own” the process by using Rypple. This will empower them to get feedback, to learn, and to improve. It will help to increase engagement, satisfaction and productivity.