A Forward-Looking Approach to Performance Reviews
Source: Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders
The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Rita Keller.
I have been saying for many years that if you don't update your performance management system, everyone ends up dreading something that was originally intended to be inspiring and helpful. This particular Big Four firm found that the old way of creating the ratings consumed close to two million hours a year! For you working in a local or regional accounting firm, it perhaps FEELS LIKE two million hours!
Bottom line, it streamlined its system to focus on how to help the person going forward and not dwell so much on looking backwards. It is asking leaders what they would do with their team members, not what they think of them. It makes so much sense.
Every quarter (or at the end of a large project), it will ask team leaders to respond to four future-focused statements about each team member. It did a lot of research before drafting the four statements:
- Given what I know of this person's performance, and if it were my money, I would award this person the highest possible compensation increase and bonus (measures overall performance and unique value to the organization on a five-point scale, from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”).
- Given what I know of this person's performance, I would always want him or her on my team (measures ability to work well with others on the same five-point scale).
- This person is at risk for low performance (identifies problems that might harm the customer or the team on a yes-or-no basis).
- This person is ready for promotion today (measures potential on a yes-or-no basis).
For the complete article, read “Two Million Hours Per Year on Performance Management.”
From Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders, the newsletter of Rita Keller, August 2015, http://www.ritakeller.com.