你的公司还在用年度考核评价员工？这种方式很糟糕
若想提振士气、加强员工同公司的连接、避免人员流失，主管应每周与下属沟通。
Annual Reviews Are a Terrible Way to Evaluate Employees
To maintain morale, stay connected to employees and avoid attrition, managers should check in with their reports every week
2022年5月9日
笔记导读
demoralize /dɪˈmɔ:rəˌlaɪz/ 使士气低落;使失去信心;使泄气；If something demoralizes someone, it makes them lose so much confidence in what they are doing that they want to give up. ◆The ship’s crew were now exhausted and utterly demoralized.
这艘船上的船员现在都已精疲力竭，彻底丧失了信心。anomaly /ə’nɒm(ə)lɪ/ 反常[事物]; 异常现象；If something is an anomaly, it is different from what is usual or expected.
akin to something 相似，类似
fall into three broad buckets: …体现在三个方面…
idiosyncratic /ˌɪdɪəsɪŋ’krætɪk/ 乖僻的;怪异的；If you describe someone’s actions or characteristics as idiosyncratic, you mean that they are rather unusual. ◆…a highly idiosyncratic personality. 非常乖僻的个性
gritty /’grɪtɪ/ 含沙砾的；坚毅的；（对不好事物的描述）逼真的，真实的，活生生的；◆ a gritty description of urban violence 对城市暴力的真实描述 ◆ gritty determination 坚定的决心 ◆ a layer of gritty dust 一层沙尘
双语全文（翻译来自官方）
Gena is a really hard worker. She does technical contract support for real-estate salespeople in Southern California at one of the largest agencies in the country. She enjoys the work and is proud of the culture of the company. Her computer login data reveals that she starts work at the same time every day, and, with the exception of an hour for lunch, she remains connected and active until she shuts her computer off at 6 p.m.
吉娜(Gena)真的是个非常努力的员工。她的工作是为南加州的房产销售人员提供合同技术支持——她所在机构的规模在全美同行中居于前列。她热爱这份工作，同时也以公司的企业文化为荣。她的电脑登录数据显示，她每天都在同一时间开始工作，除去中午吃饭的一个小时，她随时都在线，并且处于活跃状态，直到下午6点关上电脑。
And yet she is now interviewing to leave the company she loves.
然而眼下，她正在参加工作面试，想要离开自己热爱的公司。
Why? Because she’s just experienced what millions of workers experience: the annual performance review. And she’s been left so demoralized that she now wants to quit.
何以至此？因为她刚刚经历了数百万上班族都会经历的事：年度绩效考核。她感到很灰心，想要辞职。
Gena, who asked to be identified by only her first name, isn’t an anomaly. Gallup data from the 2020 version of their continuing workplace research reveal that 86% of employees don’t think their annual review is accurate. In a 2018 Adobe Inc. study of a representative sample of 1,500 office workers, 22% reported that they’d even burst into tears during their review.
吉娜的情况并非个例。她要求在文中只透露自己的名，隐去其姓氏。盖洛普(Gallup)一直在进行有关职场的研究，该研究2020年的数据显示，86%的员工认为他们的年度考核不够准确。2018年，奥多比(Adobe Inc.)一项针对1,500名具有代表性的白领员工的研究显示，该样本中22%的人表示他们在评估过程中甚至会哭出来。
For millions, the annual performance review is akin to going to a bad dentist: Before you go, you dread it; while you’re there, it’s painful; after it’s done, nothing’s fixed. And yet the annual review remains a reality for most workers, even in these changed Covid-ian times. Gartner data shows that 81% of companies are considering redesigning their performance-management systems with the addition of more frequent “touchpoints.” Nonetheless, research by both World at Work and XpertHR reveal that between 63% and 80% of organizations say they still do the annual review. Most companies, large and small, hand out bonuses or variable compensation annually, so for them it makes sense to allocate these funds in the context of a once-a-year discussion about performance. It doesn’t always make sense, though, for the workers themselves.
对数百万上班族来说，年度绩效考核就像是去看一位糟糕的牙医：去之前，你心情忐忑；看的过程中，痛苦难耐；看完过后，一切如故。尽管如此，年度绩效考核仍是大部分上班族绕不开的现实，即便在被新冠疫情改变的当下，仍旧如此。市场研究公司Gartner的数据显示，81%的企业正在考虑重新设计绩效管理系统，引入更频繁的“接触点”。不过，世界薪酬协会(World at Work)和人力资源咨询机构XpertHR的研究显示，63%-80%的机构表示，它们仍然会进行年度考核。大部分企业，无论大小，每年都会发放奖金或是可变薪酬，因此对企业而言，根据一年一度的绩效考核来分配这些奖金也是可以理解的。只是对员工来说，这种做法有时并不合理。
The failings of the annual performance review fall into three broad buckets:
年度绩效考核的缺点主要体现在三个方面：
They are too infrequent. They are dehumanizing. They are irrelevant to real-world performance.
评估频率太低；不够人性化；与现实表现脱节。
Infrequent
评估频率太低
Goals set at the beginning of the year are irrelevant by the third week of the year. Data from ADP’s human-resources systems reveal that, after inputting their goals, fewer than 4% of people go back and check their goals even once during the year. In the real world, your actual work has precious little to do with your goals. Work happens in a continuing flow, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week.
新年伊始定下的目标到了新年第三周，就已经与现实脱节。安德普翰(ADP)人力资源系统的数据显示，定下目标后，哪怕是一年内只回看一次目标的人都不到4%。现实世界中，你的实际工作与你的目标几乎没什么关系。工作是一种持续的流动状态，每周、每天甚至每个小时，它都在变化。
You, the worker, experience successes and joy and struggles and frustrations, in this flow—and you want to talk to someone about it in the moment, when it’s all still vivid and fresh in your and your manager’s mind. Instead, the annual review asks you to store it all up for your once-a-year performance appraisal.
职场上的你在这种流动的状态中经历着成功与喜悦，也体会着挣扎与失落——你当即就想与人分享自己的感受，乘着此时，不管是你还是你的上级，脑海中都保有鲜活的画面。可是，年度考核却让你把这些记忆统统储存起来，等到一年一度的绩效考核时再来谈论。
Little wonder that you feel tense and anxious going in: You know you and your manager won’t be able to remember what you’ve actually been doing beyond the very recent past; you also know that you have to get all your passions, anxieties and hopes out on the table because you won’t get another chance for a year.
难怪你在接受年度考核时会感到紧张和焦虑：你知道你和你的上级都不会记得你之前究竟做了哪些事（除非发生在最近）；你还知道，这一次你必须把所有的热情、焦虑和希望都摆到桌面上，因为一年内你不会再有第二次这样的机会。
Dehumanizing
不够人性化
Gena went into her review knowing that she was highly regarded by her agency—so much so, in fact, that the prior month they had used her as part of a study to learn how the very best contract-support people did their work. She was hoping for confirmation that she was seen very positively, a discussion about how she might learn and grow, and, perhaps, a 4% raise.
吉娜接受年度考核时认为，公司对她的评价会很高——实际上，前一个月他们曾把她作为研究对象之一，以此了解那些最优秀的合同支持人员是如何工作的。她希望自己积极工作的态度能得到认可，希望公司能和她讨论今后的个人成长道路，或许，还可以加薪4%。
She got none of these things. She got told instead that she was a 3.
然而，这些愿望全都落空了。有人告诉她，她处在第三档。
“I’m a 3?” she asked. “What’s that mean?” She was told that all employees were rated on a 7-point scale. Only a very few people were ever given 1s or 2s; if you got a 6 or a 7 you were basically fired. So her 3 put her solidly in the upper-medium range of performance. When she pushed back and asked about her work techniques being modeled for the entire company, there was a pause. “Look, we would like to have given you a 2,” her manager said. “But we’ve run out of 2s.” It’s a forced curve, she was told, so while they said she deserved a 2, they just didn’t have any left. “Perhaps you can just think of yourself as a 2,” her manager said.
“我是第三档？”她问道，“这是什么意思？”她被告知，所有员工都会接受一至七档的评分。只有少数人被评为一档或是二档；如果你被评为六档或是七档，基本也就相当于要被解雇了。因此，吉娜的三档在绩效考核中处于中上水平。后来，她对自己的分数提出质疑，并提到她在工作技能方面曾被视为全公司表率的事，这时，她的主管停顿了一会儿。“我们本来是想给你评二档的。”她的主管说，“但二档的名额已经用完了。”吉娜得知，每一档的名额都是定好的，所以尽管他们说她符合二档的要求，但就是没有名额了。“也许你可以把自己想成是二档。”她的主管说。
Gena didn’t want to think of herself as a 2. All she wanted was someone to talk with her about her—her skills, performance, her hopes for tomorrow, her dreams of a fulfilling career.
吉娜不想把自己想成是二档。她只想找个人聊聊自己的情况——她的技能、她的表现、她的未来期许，以及她渴望拥有成功事业的梦想。
And no, she didn’t get the 4% raise. That was only for 2’s.
而且，她没有得到4%的加薪。那只属于评分在前两档的人。
Irrelevant
与现实脱节
Each worker is unique in what they love and loathe about their work. Even those who excel at the very same job excel differently—excellence in any job is idiosyncratic. Research from the ADP Research Institute’s series of global studies of more than 50,000 workers from 27 countries reveals that workers who report they find love in what they do, and are good at it, are far more likely to be engaged, resilient, and experience less stress on the job, regardless of what their job is. They are far less likely to express an intent to leave, or even to be actively interviewing for a new job.
说到工作中的好恶，每个人都不相同。即便是从事同一类工作的佼佼者们，也通常是在不同的方面有所长——不管干什么工作都能干好的人，只是异类罢了。安德普翰研究院(ADP Research Institute)曾对27个国家的逾5万名员工进行过一系列研究，结果显示，那些声称自己热爱工作且具有良好工作能力的员工，无论其工作类型如何，都更有可能展现出敬业精神和韧性，同时感受到的工作压力可能也更小。此外，他们表达出离职意愿的可能性也要小得多，即便是积极参与面试、寻找新工作的概率也要低很多。
The annual performance review, as expensive and as time-consuming as it is for companies to do—in a case study I coauthored for Harvard Business Review, Deloitte calculated that the process took the firm’s managers up to two million hours a year—pays no attention whatsoever to the unique loves, loathings, passions and strengths of each worker. All the really meaty details that a manager might want to explore to help a worker get better at their job are missing from the annual review. Replaced instead by vague feedback about whether they “hit their goals” this year, and what rating number this warrants.
对企业来说，年度绩效考核成本高，又费时。我曾与他人一起为《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)编写过一个案例研究，我在里面引用过德勤(Deloitte)的数据，据它估计，企业管理人员每年共计最多要花200万个小时来完成年度绩效考核。不仅如此，每名员工的好恶、热情和长处本就不同，对此，年度考核完全覆盖不到。至于所有真正有意义的细节——管理人员或许想以此为切入点来帮助员工提升工作表现——在年度绩效考核中则处于缺失状态。取而代之的，是对员工今年是否“完成目标”的模糊反馈，以及根据完成情况给予评分。
Performance reviews miss the gritty, granular, unique raw material of real performance.
绩效考核遗漏了能够体现出员工真实表现的素材，这些素材坚实、细分并且独一无二。
The annual review should be dead, a relic of MBO’s, KRA’s, OKR’s and all those falsely precise acronyms spawned in the Jack Welchian 80s and Andy Grovian 90s. But they aren’t. They live on—still today, OKR’s lurk inside the performance appraisals at many Silicon Valley tech giants. And they are among the reasons so many companies will wonder why they can’t keep their talent. Why one day the Genas of the world—sound, hardworking, well-intentioned people—suddenly up and quit.
年度绩效考核应被废止。它是MBO、KRA、OKR（译注：三者均为绩效管理工具，分别意为目标管理法、关键结果领域管理法、目标与关键成果管理法）以及所有那些看似准确实则不然的首字母缩略词体系，它们诞生于杰克·韦尔奇(Jack Welch)的上世纪80年代以及安迪·葛洛夫(Andy Grove)的90年代。现实是相反的。年度绩效考核依然存在——时至今日，许多硅谷科技巨头的绩效考核中仍有OKR的影子。之所以会有如此多的企业不明白它们为何留不住人才，这便是原因之一。有朝一日，全世界的“吉娜”——那些可靠、努力、善良的员工——会突然辞职，也是因为这个原因。
The irony is that the solution—what should we replace them with—is quite simple. Split the annual review in two: performance measurement and performance development. Do the performance-measurement part once a year, if yours is the sort of company that hands out variable compensation once a year. Though even here, you can drop the rating and just go straight to offering the worker the variable comp you feel they deserve—no need for the dehumanizing fakery of the forced-curved rating.
具有讽刺意味的是，这个问题的解决方法，也就是替代方案，相当简单。我们可以将年度考核分为两部分：绩效衡量与绩效展望。如果你所在的公司每年发放一次可变薪酬，则每年进行一次绩效衡量。但衡量绩效时，不要采取评分方式，而是直接向员工发放你认为他们应得的可变薪酬——无需借助名额固定、缺乏人性化考虑的虚假评分体系。
And do the performance-development part the way all good coaches (and good parents, yes?) do it: Ask every manager to check in with each team member for 15 minutes every single week. In the check-in they’ll ask just a couple of questions: What did you really love doing last week, and what did you loathe? And, What are your priorities this week and how can I help?
至于绩效展望，可以参考所有优秀教练的做法（优秀父母也是一样，对吗？）：让每位管理者与每名团队成员每周进行15分钟的沟通。在此过程中，他们只需问几个问题：上周你真正喜欢做的事情是什么？不喜欢做的又是什么？本周你的首要任务是什么，我能帮上什么忙吗？
These check-ins aren’t for delivering feedback. Workers want attention, not feedback, and mostly attention on where they’ve shown glimpses of something good, and how they might show more of them. Cisco has tracked more than 3 million check-ins over the past four years, continuing them as a way to stay connected to their employees through the pandemic. Those managers who check in with each employee for 15 minutes every single week drove employee engagement—how committed and excited each employee is at work (as measured by surveys)—up 77% and actual first-year voluntary turnover down 67%.
这些沟通不是为了提供反馈。员工想要的是关注，而不是反馈，而且主要是关注他们在哪些地方做得好，以及将来如何在更多方面表现出色。思科(Cisco)过去四年间曾追踪过300多万场这样的沟通，如今这种沟通仍在延续，思科已将其作为疫情期间与员工保持联系的一种方式。得益于管理者每周与每名员工之间的15分钟沟通，思科的员工积极性——员工在工作中的投入程度与兴奋程度（通过调查来衡量）——提高了77%，同时，入职第一年的实际主动离职率下降了67%。
When we humans get this sort of frequent, light-touch, in-the-moment attention on what we love to do and how to do more of it, we stay, we stay connected, and we stay productive. When we don’t, we up and quit.
当我们人类看到自己爱做的事以及如何才能做更多爱做之事频频得到重视的时候，并且这种重视既充满人性化，又回应及时，我们会选择留下，会继续和企业沟通，也会一如既往地高效工作。
This might seem straightforward, but we seem to have set up our organizations to actively prevent it from happening. For example, in all the news about the struggles of healthcare workers during the pandemic, one factor that rarely arises is the number of employees a given supervisor is responsible for, known in the HR world as “span of control.” In most hospitals the ratio of nurse supervisor-to-nurse is 1 to 60. How can that poor nurse supervisor check in with their people each week, even if for only 15 minutes, if they have 60 people to check in with? Well, they can’t. So they don’t. And so these 60 nurses feel unseen, with no connection, disengaged. And they leave.
这看上去似乎不难，但我们搭建的组织架构似乎是为了积极阻止这一幕出现。例如，在报道疫情期间医护人员艰难处境的所有新闻中，很少有人提到一个问题，即一名主管负责的员工人数，在人力资源领域，对应的术语叫做“管理跨度”。大部分医院里，护士主管与护士的比例仅为1:60。倘若有60名护士需要沟通，可怜的护士主管如何能做到每周沟通一次，哪怕每次沟通只要15分钟？他们没法做到。他们索性不去做了。如此一来，这60名护士会感觉不受重视、没有归属感，觉得自己被边缘化了。于是，他们离职了。
Rather than focusing on managers’ span of control, companies should focus on their span of attention—and get it right, so that each manager can check in with (not check up on) each worker. Replace the expensive and cumbersome annual review with a weekly light-touch check-in, and companies may very well solve not only their hiring and attrition problems—but their well-being and productivity challenges too.
对企业来说，它们要关注的不是管理者的管理跨度，而是他们的注意力跨度——将其维持在正确的轨道上，确保每名管理者与每位员工能进行双向沟通（而不是单方面检查员工的工作情况）。取消费力繁琐的年度考核，换成每周一次的轻松沟通，通过这种改变，企业或许不仅可以很好地解决招聘和人员流失问题，它们在福利和工作效率上遭遇的挑战或许也能迎刃而解。
Marcus Buckingham is the author of “Love + Work: How to Find What You Love, Love What You Do, and Do It for the Rest of Your Life” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal bestseller. He is currently head of People + Performance Research at ADP Research Institute.
