It's our favorite time of year: Performance season!
As review cycles roll around again, it’s tempting to focus on forms, timelines, and ratings.
But this HR Brew piece is a good reminder that performance processes don’t fail because they’re too ambitious. They fail when the fundamentals are missing:
Clear expectations
Regular feedback (not surprises)
Managers who know how to have human conversations, not just complete a process
When those basics aren’t in place, reviews feel heavy, transactional, and disconnected from real growth. But when they are, performance conversations can become what they were always meant to be: moments of alignment, reflection, and forward momentum.
Performance reviews shouldn’t be the only time people hear how they’re doing. They're there to be a checkpoint, not a surprise reveal.
Are our performance processes helping people grow, or are they just helping us check a box?