Paperwork is not performance management

Most organizations we work with already have a performance management system. Forms exist, ratings are recorded, the HR calendar reserves a fortnight each year for appraisals. What is often missing is any evidence that the exercise changed how anyone worked. When a system consumes senior time and produces no behavioural change, the problem is usually in its design rather than the commitment of the people running it.

Objectives set once a year describe a company that no longer exists

Objectives agreed in January are frequently overtaken by March. If nobody formally revisits them, the year-end conversation assesses someone against work that stopped being the priority long ago — and everyone in the room knows it, which is why the discussion becomes ritual. Review objectives quarterly. It takes twenty minutes per person and keeps the target aligned with what the organization actually needs done.

Too many objectives means no priorities

A staff member with fourteen objectives has none. They will do what their manager asks about most often, which may bear no relation to the form. Three to five objectives per person is the workable range. Each should be something the individual can genuinely influence — holding a branch officer accountable for a national revenue figure teaches only that the system is arbitrary.

The rating conversation swallows the development conversation

When rating, pay and development are discussed in one meeting, only one topic survives: the number. Nobody absorbs feedback on their leadership style while waiting to hear what their increment will be. Separate them. Hold the development conversation on its own, several weeks away from the pay decision, and it becomes a genuinely different discussion.

Feedback arrives once a year, at volume

If a manager raises a performance concern for the first time at the annual appraisal, two things follow. The employee has had no opportunity to correct it, and the manager's position is procedurally weak if the matter ever escalates. Feedback should be routine and small: a short monthly one-to-one where progress, obstacles and one thing to do differently are discussed and briefly noted. The annual review then summarises a year of documented conversations rather than delivering a verdict.

Managers are asked to do something nobody trained them for

Conducting an honest performance conversation is a skill. Most managers are promoted for technical competence and then handed an appraisal form with no preparation. The predictable result is inflation — everyone rated "meets expectations" or above, because a candid rating requires a difficult conversation the manager has not been equipped to hold. Train managers on the conversation itself: how to describe observed behaviour rather than personality, how to listen to the response, how to agree a specific action with a date.

What a system that works looks like

  • A small number of objectives per person, reviewed quarterly and rewritten when priorities move.
  • Monthly one-to-ones, short, documented in a few lines, owned by the line manager.
  • Ratings calibrated across managers so the same standard applies in every department.
  • Development discussed separately from pay, with a budget behind whatever is agreed.
  • Underperformance addressed through a defined improvement process with support, timelines and written records.
  • An explicit link to how strong performance affects progression, so the exercise visibly matters.

Handling underperformance properly

Where performance genuinely falls short, the fair and lawful route is a documented improvement process: state the specific gap, agree what good looks like, provide the training or supervision required, set a realistic review period, and record what happened. This protects the employee, who receives a real chance to improve, and it protects the employer, whose position is defensible if the matter is later tested. Skipping to termination because the paperwork is tedious is how organizations lose cases they should have won.

Start smaller than you think

If your current system is not working, resist replacing it with a more elaborate one. Pick one department, cut objectives to five, institute monthly one-to-ones, and train those managers properly. Run it for two quarters and compare. A performance system spreads through an organization because managers see it working somewhere else — not because it was announced.