Workers might hate performance reviews less if they looked like this

"The dreaded performance review draws the ire of employees and managers alike. Workers fret that reviews fail to capture the full scope of their work, or that they are an unfair assessment of their performance. For managers, reviews can be a time-consuming nuisance and involve the challenging task of delivering tough feedback. But a new study from Cornell University finds that the structure of the performance review can have a huge impact on how workers feel about them."

"Over the last decade, a number of companies have revamped their performance reviews, seemingly to address the long-standing pain points. The likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have moved away from numerical ratings, while tech companies like Microsoft eliminated stack rankings (reviews that essentially rank employees against their colleagues) and Adobe eliminated reviews altogether. (More recently, however, tech giants like Google and Meta have actually pushed for more stringent evaluations of employees and, in turn, lower ratings.)"

"The Cornell researchers examined how the shift away from numerical reviews has influenced employee sentiment. Emily Zitek, a professor of organizational behavior, and her coauthors analyzed how employees feel about performance reviews that emphasize "narrative" or qualitative feedback over numerical rankings. The team looked at three different performance review formats: those that exclusively used either numerical ratings or narrative feedback, and those that employed a mix of both. What the researchers found overall was that employees believed performance reviews were, in fact, more fair when they did not have numbers attached and were purely narrative-driven."

Employees commonly view performance reviews as incomplete and unfair, while managers find them time-consuming and difficult for delivering tough feedback. Many firms changed review formats: some removed numerical ratings or stack rankings, and others eliminated reviews entirely, though a few later reinstated stricter evaluations. A move from numerical scores toward narrative, qualitative feedback shifts employee sentiment. Reviews composed purely of narrative wording are perceived as more fair than those with numbers attached, even when numerical ratings indicate average performance.

Read at Fast Company