Why Your Performance Review Process Is Broken (And How to Fix It Without Another HR Committee) 

If I have to sit through one more annual performance review where someone rates their "communication skills" as 4 out of 5 while simultaneously proving they can't string together a coherent sentence about their actual job responsibilities, I might lose what's left of my sanity.

Been there? Course you have. We all have.

I've just finished helping a mid-size logistics company in Perth overhaul their entire performance management system, and the stories that came out during our initial workshops were bloody hilarious. And by hilarious, I mean soul-crushingly depressing.

One manager told me he'd been copying and pasting the same performance review comments for three years running. Another admitted she'd never actually read the self-assessments her team submitted because "they're all the same anyway." A team leader confessed he schedules all his performance reviews for Friday afternoons so they'll run short because everyone wants to leave early.

This is what passes for professional development in 2025. Brilliant.

The Annual Charade That Helps Nobody

Here's what's mental about traditional performance reviews: they happen once a year, focus on the past instead of the future, and treat every employee like they're motivated by exactly the same things.

It's like trying to navigate using a map from 1987. Technically it shows roads, but good luck getting anywhere useful.

Most performance review systems were designed in the 1980s for hierarchical organisations where people stayed in the same job for decades. Now we've got matrix teams, project-based work, and career paths that look more like choose-your-own-adventure books than corporate ladders. Yet we're still using the same forms that ask people to rate themselves on "reliability" and "teamwork."

What does that even mean anymore? Reliable at what? Teamwork in which context? It's like asking someone to rate their "goodness at business stuff."

The worst part is everyone knows it's broken. Managers hate doing reviews because they're time-consuming and awkward. Employees hate receiving them because they're usually generic and unhelpful. HR departments hate managing them because they're administrative nightmares that don't actually improve performance.

So why do we keep doing them? Because nobody wants to be the one to admit we've been wasting everyone's time for decades.

What Actually Drives Performance (Hint: It's Not Annual Ratings)

I spent five years working in operations before I got into training and consulting, and I can tell you this much: the best performers I knew got better because they had regular, specific feedback about things they could actually control.

Not once-a-year conversations about abstract competencies. Not rating scales that compare them to some mythical "ideal employee." Real-time input about specific situations, decisions, and outcomes.

The project manager who learned to anticipate client concerns because her boss pointed out patterns in customer feedback as they happened. The sales rep who improved his closing rate because someone showed him exactly which questions were losing prospects during actual sales calls. The team coordinator who became brilliant at handling difficult conversations because she got coached through tricky situations immediately after they occurred.

None of that happened during formal performance reviews. It happened during the daily flow of work when feedback could actually be applied.

Performance Improvement Happens in Real Time The best managers I work with give feedback constantly – not as criticism, but as course corrections. Like a GPS that recalculates your route when you take a wrong turn, instead of waiting until the end of the journey to tell you where you went wrong.

Individual Motivation Varies Wildly Some people are driven by recognition, others by autonomy. Some want clear structure, others need creative challenges. Some thrive on competition, others prefer collaboration. Generic performance reviews ignore these differences completely.

Career Development Isn't Linear The old model assumed everyone wanted to climb the same ladder. Now people want portfolio careers, lateral moves, project leadership, specialist expertise, entrepreneurial opportunities. Performance reviews that only measure "promotion readiness" miss about 80% of what actually motivates good employees.