It's Time To Justify My Pay-Check

It’s that time of the year when the corporate world is pre-occupied with the end of year performance reviews. The exercise usually involves setting of goals at the beginning of the year and is finalized at the end of the year with the reviewing of one’s performance. In between there could be mid-year reviews or goals updating depending with the organization.

For many people, this can be a stressful experience as you are not only measured against the goals you set but also against your peers in the organization. I’d like to think of myself as a veteran owing to the many number of years that I’ve gone through the process. When I was first employed, the whole process used to be done in a Word document but over the years the process has shifted to internet based performance evaluations. This system makes it easier to compute the individual's allocations and the weightings, and also allows for an easier calibration and comparison against other colleagues.

For some reason that I am yet to understand, every single time that I’ve done my performance review I always break out into a cold sweat. I guess the anxiety of finding out the feedback from my fellow workmates and also my boss’ rating takes me over the edge. As relaxing or informal as the process may be, midway through the review I get a stream of sweat dripping down my arms. It’s unlike the usual sweating due to hot weather or exercise because the sweating lasts less than a minute.

As important as the whole performance review process may be, you’d be surprised that not all firms participate in such a program. For instance, I have two friends in Kenya who run their own businesses. In both instances, they are partners in their firm's. Come the beginning of the year and its business as usual for them. Everyone including the owners report to work and get on with their schedules. It shocked me that anyone could run a business without the formal alignment of the business goals and the output from the employees. What’s more, there is no measure of success other than revenues received from their customers. And in both cases, I did find out that it is common for the co-owners to perform their duties in divergence. As such the whole organization is an amorphous entity that takes different forms depending on changing priorities of their work. As if that was not enough, they did not have any documented and agreed upon long term goals or planning.

You’d be surprised how shocked my friends were when I told them that even as an individual, I am supposed to have long-term goals at my place of work in addition to my annual goals. Not only do companies measure the technical/sales/project work but also an employee's behaviors. The reason for doing so is because your behavioral aspects have a direct impact on the work that you do and the colleagues that you interact with. As such, I have to display leadership, teamwork, inclusiveness, integrity, innovation, quality, customer focus, respect and a host of other qualities that support the values and mission of my employer.

If you ask me, performance reviews should be a must in every firm and especially those that have more than three employees because they ensure that all the employees are working towards a common goal. Starting with the leaders, the exercise should be cascaded downwards such that employees, who are the foot soldiers, are hearing and acting on the same orders message.

I’m not sure if my friends will do anything to adopt performance reviews in their firms because they seemed confused about the whole exercise as they had never been through one before. As overwhelming as the process may be, there is no way I could run my own business without carrying out performance reviews for my employees. While there is a lot of politics when it comes to carrying out performance reviews, you can’t ignore the fact that it promotes transparency and accountability at the work place. Come next year, promotions and pay rises will be tied to this year's performance review.

The good thing is a lot of companies in Kenya are embracing such corporate practices and this has created a demand for Kenyans who have worked overseas. With the corporate business experience in addition to the technical expertise, such employees bring a with them a rich experience. It's no wonder that some firms are keen to hire overseas job seekers with least one year's experience abroad.

My moment of Zen; A snapshot from from my end of year performance review. Not only can I do a spelling check but also a language check.

Two words got picked up from my self-review. 'Black' in reference to the title of an event that I participated in and 'Senior' in reference to the title of Senior Director. Political correctness (PC), cover your ass (CYA) or both?

Related post; Evolution of the performance review process by Maina of Kenya Capital Investment of Group blog.