One Potential Pandemic Upside: Performance Reviews are Getting Simpler | The Washington Post

The coronavirus crisis continues to compel organizations to reimagine their talent practices for a new world of work. One talent practice that continues to undergo change is performance management (PM). These changes range from postponing performance reviews, eliminating them for a specific timeframe, resetting goals to reflect a shorter-term time horizon with less aggressive goals, and more frequent performance check-in discussions, to name a few. This article cites a few examples of how companies such as Goldman Sachs, Box, and Anheuser-Busch InBev are altering their PM, with a central goal of making PM less complex. And while simplicity should be a goal of any process (and hopefully PM does become simpler), it should not be the only goal. As such, firms would benefit from applying multiple factors and criteria as they consider changes to their PM. Such an approach can help prevent or minimize unintended consequences of decisions based heavily or exclusively on any single factor. Here is an article by Marc Effron (Talent Strategy Group) that I posted earlier this year and outlines how firms can handle PM in an unprecedented year. It helps organizations use criteria to make PM decisions that fit their situation rather than just adopt what other companies are doing.