by Jennifer VanAntwerp, June 12, 2022
Does your employer include you in the performance review process? Does the way in which your performance is evaluated, regardless of the "rating", make you feel a part of the organization? Or does it leave you feeling left out?
If your feelings of belonging at work seem tied to how your performance is evaluated, regardless of whether you are performing well or poorly, you are not alone. Employees who are part of a structured evaluation system that includes effective management of each employee's performance and clear communication are over 1.4 times more likely to feel a sense of inclusion at work compared to those who are subject to less transparent performance evaluations.
Recently, one of my colleagues, an engineering manager, related the performance review process that he was expected to implement at work. Every time performance reviews came around, he was expected to rank all his team members in such a way that their "performance" conformed to a nice, neat bell-curve, zero sum game.
Despite the fact that the number of people in my workgroup were far below the typical sample size that one would expect for a reliable normal distribution and there was no reason to think they were a random representation of engineers, someone in upper management had gotten hooked on thinking that all workgroups could be molded into a bell curve. The above and below average performers would have to balance within each work unit, regardless of what the actual distribution of their performance looked like.
During one review cycle, this method of performance evaluation seemed especially disrespectful of his team, prompting my colleague to approach upper management, pleading for leniency:
"This is the best team of people I have ever worked with. They are each truly exceptional individuals, and they are truly exceptional in how they work together synergistically to achieve even more. I think they all deserve an above average rating this year."
Despite pleading for a more humane (and accurate) performance review approach, his request was refused. This manager was forced to choose which star employees to disappoint, demoralize, even antagonize. He had to create unhealthy competition among a team that had previously been working well to support each other. After he completed the reviews, the morale in his workgroup declined and attrition soon followed.
Google has had its share of bad press as an employer in the last few years. In 2018, more than 20,000 employees held a walk-out to protest the inadequate response of upper management to discrimination, racism, and sexual harassment. Employees were not only unhappy about the specific incidences of quiet and cushy exit packages for those who had harassed, but also because of what employees believed to be an inadequate reporting system for offenses. Employees were not universally satisfied with Google response, but it appears that the executive leadership is learning. Since these protests, Google CEO Sundar Pichai expressed in a recent interview that he understands the strong employee voice at Google to be an important asset:
"You trust your employees to get it right at scale.... So I view it as a strength of the company when employees speak up. I think it's important for us to take it seriously."
Technology columnist Jason Aten applauds Google for a recent change that seems to indicate Google is walking this talk: how Google reviews its employees. In the old process, employee performance reviewed happened twice a year, and each individual review involved hours of work by multiple personnel. More significantly, over half of Google employees felt that these reviews were mostly a waste of time. In other words, all of the time invested was even more frustrating because it did not seem to be adding any value. Going forward, those reviews will be cut in half, which already reduces the time investment. Taking the concerns of employees seriously benefits everyone.
But perhaps even more significantly, the rating process has been revamped to reflect a different point of view about its employees:
As Google now tells its employees:
Our new rating scale will reflect the fact that most Googlers deliver significant impact every day.
Think of the (unfortunate) novelty of this concept. The employer allows for the possibility that every team member is making important and distinct contributions. They don't force their team leaders to smash a small group of employees into an artificial bell curve.
Or as Jason Aten put it:
What is your workplace like? Do you find yourself forced into a competitive relationship with the very teammates who should be your best supporters (and vice versa)? Or does your workplace encourage the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats? Does your empower everyone to both develop and work from their strengths while simultaneously having opportunities to grow new skills?
| Jennifer VanAntwerp is a professor of chemical engineering at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She researches how engineers learn, work, and thrive, beginning in college and extending throughout their professional careers |
