News

Every year around the end of January I notice my fellow humans acting weird. Tempers flare and lower backs get thrown out. Shoulders creep up necks, making otherwise well-adjusted colleagues resemble hulking trolls. People freak out. But it's not just the darkness or the wind chill or the news of murder and mayhem from British Columbia to Baghdad. It's more personal than that. January sucks because it's performance-appraisal month.

Here's a secret: I don't have much use for performance reviews. Like most writers, I evaluate my performance based on the response I get from editors and readers. If I hand in something that's not up to snuff, I know it -- right away. And while it's always a good idea to check in with the boss, I don't think the formality, logistics and stress involved in the annual appraisal process are worth the hassle.

Dilbert agrees with me on this point, and he's not the only one. According to Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins, authors of Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and What to do Instead, 80 per cent of American companies use performance appraisals, but a whopping 90 per cent of those report that they are unhappy with the results. A more recent U.S. study published in The Washington Post found similarly dismal results.

The argument against performance appraisals is not just slacker backlash -- it's grounded in fact. According to a report by Distance Consulting published in the Corporate University Review, performance-appraisal systems, while accepted practice by most major companies, have been proved to devour staggering amounts of time, depress and de-motivate both managers and workers, destroy trust and team work and, "adding insult to injury," deliver "little demonstrable value at great cost."

No wonder the anxiety elicited by this annual ritual of goal-setting and score-keeping is firmly embedded in our popular culture. Swiffer commercials riff on it, as do the instructors at my yoga studio (who assure me all I need to do to get through this time of year is concentrate on my breathing and "be in the moment"). TV shows such as The Apprentice and American Idol offer a perverse catharsis by catering to our desire to see other people raked over the coals for their inability to make the grade.

At least we've reached the point where we can crack jokes about poor performance -- so long as it's not our own. Some people seriously need to relax about this stuff. I have seen acquaintances on the verge of breakdowns after receiving poor reviews. One woman I know gets so stressed out she throws up the morning before her appraisal. Another friend can't sleep for a week. An inordinate number of people end up crying and unloading all their personal problems on their boss's office floor.

Performance reviews play on our most primal fears. A week before mine, I start getting The Nightmare. You know the one, where you're back in high school except it's not your high school and there's an exam but you haven't been to the class all year and you know you're going to fail but you're running through the halls (possibly naked) trying to find the classroom but you can't find the classroom and you know you'll have to go back and do Grade 11-- and your whole life -- all over again?

Of course, some people have reason to worry. One huge problem with the appraisal model, Distance Consulting argues, is that it assumes the manager's perception is accurate, comprehensive and free from any significant bias. But what if your boss is an idiot? Think of Pam, the receptionist on NBC's The Office, who wistfully remarked, "It's performance review day. . . . Last year, my performance review started with Michael asking me what my hopes and dreams were, and it ended with him telling me he could bench-press 190 pounds."

Unfortunately, it's almost always pompous morons like Michael who take pleasure in grading their underlings. It's no secret that most good managers detest performance reviews, both for the time and energy they take and the bad feelings they so often incur. The irony is that in a properly managed workplace, where feedback and critical discussion are part of the culture, annual reviews are unnecessary. And in badly managed offices, where performance reviews are the only chance employees have to get feedback, they're useless.

"It's like dating," says Tova White, head of human resources for Indigo Canada. "You don't want the person to one day sit down and say, 'Everything you're doing bothers me and we're breaking up.' You'd hope that you'd get a chance to course-correct before you got to that point."

Alas, most Canadians do not work in properly managed workplaces, so reviews remain a fact of life. Until they fall out of fashion, we'll just have to accept them. Tolerance of other people's ideas, after all, is key to being a pro-active team player. Here's hoping I make the grade. If not, there's always yoga.

lmclaren@globeandmail.com