Would you be happy to skip your review?

At my friend's company, no one had mentioned anything about having a review this year.  Finally, my friend asked his boss, "Are we having reviews?"  The response: "Well, last year, we did all the reviews, and HR was supposed to signoff on them all so we could pass them out, but they never even returned them.  So I figure, why bother?"

See anything wrong here?

If the manager values the review only for the HR documentation, then the manager's response was perfectly rational.  But, the only value of an HR signoff on a review is for disciplinary purposes.  99% of your reviews, therefore, won't really need an HR signoff.

The real value of a review is feedback, thereby helping people grow their skills.  One of the most productive review comments follows the lines of "you are good at X, and are ready for the next step, X+1 or Y".  A good review enlightens and energizes the recipient at best, and focuses them at the least.

Of course, we don't always have managers who are good at giving reviews.

Learning to do that is a critical skill that a manager should develop, and that takes practice.  (Hopefully, the manager gets that feedback in their review!) 

You could also argue that you don't need an official review, that you could and should provide feedback everyday.  Which is true.  But 1) what are the odds that someone who doesn't give a productive annual review is going to be good at giving regular, on-the-spot feedback?  And 2) just as people go to church / mosque / etc to pray (they could be equally spiritual in their own home anytime), blocking out time away from the daily fire-fighting and distractions helps you focus on the subject at hand.


I thought about telling my friend that he should say to his boss, "Even though we're not having reviews, could you give me some feedback on how I'm doing, what I did well, and what I could do better?"  Better still, he could write up his own thoughts, give them to his boss, and ask for comments.  But given his boss's view of what a review is, why bother?