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How Will Getting Rid of Performance Ratings Affect Managers?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

Christopher J. Lake*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth
Alexandra Luong
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christopher J. Lake, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth, 1207 Ordean Court, Duluth, MN 55812. E-mail: lakec@d.umn.edu

Extract

Amid the debate about getting rid of formal performance ratings, the practical implications for managers should be carefully considered. Adler et al. (2016) acknowledged some implications for managers who evaluate their subordinates with the traditional formal review. However, they do not fully explore the implications for managers when organizations trade formal performance reviews for frequent, less-formal performance conversations, which are a very popular alternative (Meinert, 2015; Rock & Jones, 2015; Wilkie, 2015). It is possible that organizations will benefit when formal performance reviews are removed; however, upon discussing this issue with a panel of human resources executives and organizational development practitioners, we were struck by their concern for how abandoning formalized review procedures would affect managers. This panel represented a wide array of industries (healthcare, retail, manufacturing, energy, academia, and the nonprofit sector), and their organizations used a variety of performance procedures, including formalized annual reviews and informal performance conversations. The goal of this commentary is to guide thinking, with the help of our practitioner-oriented panel, toward some of the obstacles managers may face in having to provide more frequent informal performance conversations.

Type
Commentaries
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2016 

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References

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