Biblical Business Radical: Abolish the Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisals are a double-sin we need to confess and be forgiven for. I’ve written about this in other places. Performance appraisals are rife with biases, prejudices and other problems—such as immediacy (i.e. I often rate you on what you’ve done and how you’ve done it in the immediate timeframe of my memory—maybe 3 months if you’re lucky). Basically, 90% of your performance appraisal has nothing to do with your performance; 90% is determined by policies, preferences and perspectives.

Policy example: I can only rate 10% Above Average and I have to rate 10% Below Average. If you fall in the 11th percentile at the top—even though your performance is greater than a lot of other people in the company but 11th in my department—I have to rate you Average. The rating has nothing to do with your actual performance.

Preference example: I will only rate you an 8 out of 10 because I don’t believe anyone is a 9 or 10. You need something to shoot for. You may have gotten the Nobel Prize in sales, operations, customer service, whatever, but my preference is to max out ratings at an 8. So this rating has nothing to do with your performance.

Perspective example: you may have made 4 huge mistakes this year but I’ve always viewed you as a star so I’m going to rate you highly...or you may have made 4 huge mistakes this year but I’ve always viewed you as dud and so I’m going to rate you on the low-end of the scale. Sorry, your actual performance has nothing to do with the rating I give you.

In 4 places in Proverbs, Deuteronomy 25, Micah 6 (maybe another place or two or three like Leviticus), God says He hates/abhors/detests dishonest and inaccurate scales. What’s a performance appraisal but a scale to weigh and compare your performance to a standard? If 90% of it is not based on your actual performance, it’s not accurate at best and dishonest at worst. This is our first sin.

Since performance appraisals are mandated to fulfill other purposes, besides feedback—like development plans, coaching, etc.—and are tied to wages through merit increases and promotion opportunities, we fall into the trap of the second sin. In James 5, it says if we cheat workers of wages, there’s a special place in Hell for us (my paraphrase). It’s cheating because we’re using the dishonest, inaccurate appraisal instrument to determine how much your pay should increase and whether you get a raise through a promotion. Even if you get a large raise or get the promotion, you may have unfairly gotten it and deprived someone else of getting an adequate, fairly based increase or promotion...all because it’s based on badly done, subjective performance appraisals.

The solution: frequent (daily, weekly), specific feedback on actual performance and solicitation of their need for your help (“How can I help you more or hinder you less?”) and helping them remove obstacles to making progress. Also, when it’s time for merit increases, there are other criteria like positional (not individual) contribution to organizational success (and be careful how this is structured as well). Promotions can be similarly based on the same courageous, faithful practice as hiring: identifying who meets the (base) qualifications, prayer, rolling dice (i.e. casting lots).

Note: if this application of scripture seems strange to you, check out the framework to this exploration in the first and second articles in this series.