Here’s Why Workplaces Should Reevaluate How Employee Performance Reviews Are Done

How did your performance review go this year?

A number of workplace human resource departments are re-evaluating how employee performance reviews are done as sometimes they don’t go according to plan, Fortune reports.

Annual performance reviews are meetings where employees reflect on their successes and areas for improvement. They also prompt potential promotions or raises. However, Dan Kaplan, senior CHRO client partner for consulting firm Korn Ferry, feels they are an “uncomfortable process.”

“No one really likes to rank themselves and write about their own successes and shortcomings. You’re doing it once a year, you’re trying to remember what you did, because this is your one chance to try and to get a bonus,” Kaplan told Fortune. “It’s a very clunky, cumbersome, time-consuming, uncomfortable process.”

Reviews aren’t popular among supervisors and managers either. Some view them as an abusive tactic to eliminate employees for outside reasons rather than taking the appropriate steps to terminate them. They are also seen as opportunities for employees to carry on bad work habits if managers wait too long to tell them what isn’t working.

Race and gender bias also take part in the performance reviews, partially for Black and brown employees in the quality of feedback. Data from a report from HR Brew found less than 20% of Black and Hispanic workers receive high-quality input in comparison to white and Asian men. Only half revealed they’ve been called intelligent. More than 60% of Black workers are described as emotional. Women seem to get the short end of the stick.

Feedback for women tend to receive low-quality feedback based on their personality. Fifty-six percent of women said they’ve been labeled as unlikeable in their performance reviews, while 78% have been called emotional.

“High-performing women get exactly as much personality feedback as their lower-performing peers,” the report said.

The listed reasons support why more companies lean into continuous feedback, labeled as more important for remote or hybrid teams. Consistent check-ins allow managers to build a rapport with staffers along with the opportunity to change unattainable patterns. Susan Stehlik, professor of management communication at New York University Stern, said feedback works better when trying to obtain trust. “And you start building real team bonding,” which creates a “player-coach model,” she told Fortune.

Rocki Howard, founder and CEO of DE&I consulting firm Diversiology, encourages organizations to mitigate bias by showing managers how to give unbiased and, more importantly, actionable feedback as it impacts future performance, productivity, and engagement.

“This is problematic because lack of actionable feedback significantly creates less opportunity to learn and improve, which over time creates less opportunity for greater pay and promotional opportunities,” Howard added.