People hate performance evaluations. They really do. According to a survey of Fortune 1,000 companies done by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), 66% of the employees were strongly dissatisfied with the performance evaluations they received in their organizations. More strikingly, 65% of the employees believed that performance evaluations were not even relevant to their jobs.
People Don’t Want to Be Compared with Others in Performance Reviews. They Want to Be Compared with Themselves
Why do people hate performance reviews? Maybe because, according to surveys, most of us don’t think they’re fair. A team of researchers set out to examine this in more detail. In four studies based on the data collected from 1,024 American and Dutch employees, they compared two types of reference points: employees who were compared against each other, and employees whose current performance was compared against their own past performance. The latter seemed to be perceived as far more fair — in that case, participants believed that the evaluations were more individualized, believing that the manager incorporated specific information about them. Thus, they considered that the evaluations were more discerning and accurate, and that they had been treated in a more respectful way.