Next month’s Textile Services will include a feature from a prominent HR consultant on the issue of how employers and staff members can get more out of their employee-review process.
Titled “Staff Reviews – Are you Ready for a Reboot?” the article by Melissa Furman, who gave the keynote address at the TRSA Production Summit in May, will address the need to make the review process more effective for both supervisors and staff, especially younger employees who tend to have different expectations for receiving feedback from their bosses.
Furman, an academic and owner/founder of Career Potential LLC, Augusta, GA, is adamant that the yearly reviews commonly conducted with employees to gauge their progress – or lack of it – are not only ineffective but a waste of time.
“Performance reviews generally don’t work and are a pervasive problem in most organizations,” Furman says in her forthcoming article for August. “This problem is not new – though it is taking on greater importance as the younger generations question outdated protocols, challenge old systems and crave feedback. When thinking about ways to reduce the transactional costs of doing business, consider removing, replacing or refreshing your performance-review system.”
One problem Furman cites with annual reviews is supervisor bias. A supervisor’s preconceived notions about people or work practices can have a negative impact, especially given today’s increasingly diverse workforce. “People bring their own biases, backgrounds and opinions to the review process,” Furman says. “It’s very difficult to ensure a fair, equitable process.” For example, the notion of teamwork that supervisors are likely to assess during staff reviews means different things to different people. Men typically view teamwork in sports terms, with winning as the prime objective, whereas women often see teams as an opportunity for collaboration in pursuit of common goals, she says. Various ethnic cultures from African American to Hispanic or Asian may view teamwork differently, based on their backgrounds and experience. Supervisors bring their own cultural baggage to the process as well. They may find it difficult – despite their best efforts – to separate their cultural outlook when sizing up an employee’s performance. This reduces the value of the review and may even make the situation worse, she says.
A second point is that employees – especially those in the millennial (born 1981-’96) or Gen Z (born 1997-2012) cohorts – generally aren’t comfortable with the structured critiques common in yearly reviews. Furman says research shows that these employees want feedback, but they prefer to be led, rather than managed. “There are other more impactful ways, such as coaching, to enhance employee performance,” she says.
Furman recommends more frequent, less formal reviews to discuss employee performance, perhaps even on a bi-monthly or weekly basis. “Linen, uniform and facility services companies can do this, either formally or informally, depending on the culture of the organization and the needs/preferences of its employees,” she says.
Click here for a sneak peek at August’s article on revitalizing the staff-review process.
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