Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

I am in the quest of a system myself. I have tried various systems and asked other companies (big and small) on theirs. My tech startup was around 25-30 employees over 5 years. We have tried Balanced Scorecards/OKRs linked systems, 360 Evaluations, etc and ended up making a mix.

We used Google Sheets and asked for qualitative feedback on defined headers (skill with KPIs & culture/values), and a rating (1-5). Each of the headers had weightage that changed with roles & levels.

We tried to make promotions and compensation changes as data driven as possible, but they were inline with intuition / general opinion. To the employee it always felt like "Why did we do all this for such little change?!" It sucks but you need to improve the system across many years. With every round try and understand signal vs noise. That's how you build trust.

Consistency is key. A few learnings regardless of the system that I learnt the hard way:

* Communication. You need to communicate before, during and after the process. You need to make it relatable for all levels of employees. Give them specific templates with specific examples. You need to remove the narrative of you-vs-them, doing-this-to-justify-an-increase, and bring focus on reflection.

* Frequency/Cycle. "if it hurts, do it more often" is the quote that applies to this. Never let it slide. Minimum every six months, ideally every quarter.

* Review of KPIs. You need to review the KPIs every week without fail. It forces you to focus on metrics that you can move on a week-on-week basis. Anything that changes in step function over a month/quarter/year can be broken into a smaller metric.

* Rewards and Recognitions. We were always late on this. Always rolling out the red carpet when someone threatened to quit. It always felt like extortion as the manager. Don't wait for the cycle to call out extreme performance (great and terrible). Give negative feedback in private as quickly as possible. Do a non-monetary (Amazon Gift Coupons etc) for great performance. Wait for promotions and compensation.

* Pay performance linked pay well. I think this was what I got wrong the most. I did not plan the company finances well enough to pay out immediately. I would say "Hey great performance! We will pay you $$ but in 2-3 months when our situation improves". That erodes trust in a moment.

* Getting and acting on feedback. I struggled on this one too and made many excuses -- we are going through a curve

Hope this helps. I would love to hear from others.

Why? reading Wikipedia this seems to be what used to be called RAD - done right its Fucking awesome.

One thing is you need 100% collocated experienced people who know what they are doing - no third party agencies who spend 15 mins discussing pixel separation in photoshop mock-ups.

It also not something you'd carelessly throw a junior or an intern into

I hope you then worked out how much TOIL you where owned and pointed out to them the definition of salaried employment.

Very interesting. That is predicated on sales people updating some "status" right ?

You could have a very deep sales methodology. Just curious if that's how you do it

In theory performance management should be about helping people improve. In practice performance management is about four things:

1) Pay

2) Promotions

3) Accountability (e.g. firing)

4) To satisfy legal requirements (perceived and real)

Performance management falls under the umbrella of HR. HR's historical roots are in compliance. In the 90's when cost vs. profit center was the rage, the HRBP model emerged to prove HR could provide business value beyond compliance. HRBP is the dominant model now but it hasn't had the impact its creator intended. Inertia is a powerful thing.

Combine HR's roots in compliance, with the above four reasons performance management exists in practice and that will give you a good way to understand why performance management works the way it does.

If you're learning about these things in an effort to improve your own organization's practices then you can also use the above to evaluate any proposed changes and think about what they would have to contend with. History is replete with failures. Unless you are in a small organization, with total control over incentives and the culture then I will leave you with a quote from Blade:

"Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill."