Three Ways to Improve Annual Performance Reviews

Few human resources practices are more hated than the annual performance review process.  If you lament this annual or semi-annual routine as a financial and emotional drain on your company and its workforce, you are not alone. An estimated 10 percent of Fortune 500 have moved away from performance rankings, according to the Institute of Corporate Productivity, with companies such as GAP and Microsoft replacing performance evaluations with other approaches.

The financial and emotional costs of performance reviews are compounded in the high-turnover, labor-intensive workforce of the restaurant industry. 

Recent research indicates that traditional performance review processes are underperforming for businesses that use them.  Studies suggest that more than 50 percent of performance ratings has to do with the traits of the manager conducting the review, not the employee being reviewed. Other research indicates that while performance assessments generally improved employee performance…