An essential moment at the start of the year, the managerial apostolate of the month of January, the annual evaluation interview (EAE) is however far from unanimously appreciated. And for good reason ! This time of exchange, intended to be “constructive” and “benevolent”, most of the time turns out to be a long, painful river. Why (re)start the year so badly when almost everyone deplores the exercise?
It’s a management tool, its fervent supporters will retort. Let us remember that we do not manage with tools, but with qualities. Everyone fits except the suckersHomo habilis, that analytical tools systematically break with the unity and depth of the human spirit. There is no better way to miss a personality than to rely on these devices which guide evaluations and plot these interviews. They dissect behaviors, feelings and the human brain so analytically that between the limbic, the reptilian, the emotional, the analytical, the left, the right, the visual, the frontal, the postfrontal the human mind becomes a scattered puzzle difficult to understand in its entirety. The employee is then reduced to acronyms, colors, curves, pie charts, diagrams, “+” and “-“, depending on whether he is perseverant, emotional, creative, intuitive, introverted, etc. The result is that we are wasting anyone’s soul or mind in mapping the brain in this way.
We must carefully measure the achievement of objectives, the defenders of these dry methods will tell me. Remember that while the professional interview is obligatory, the annual evaluation interview is not (unless its application is fixed by a collective agreement). There are also many other more continuous, closer, more tailored ways of evaluating work over a long period of time than bombarding an employee with mechanical, impersonal and punctual questions for an hour or two once a year.
It’s an opportunity like any other to get to know the collaborators better, its most devout practitioners will add. It’s better to share a warm coffee or a nice lunch than an evaluation grid on Excel to get to know someone.
Compelling reading grids
We could multiply the arguments and counter-arguments, but the fundamental contradiction of the evaluation grids which underlie these interviews is that they seek to measure, objectify, quantify an employee. To do this, they capture the mind and collect human behavior from a quantitative angle. Because we can only measure quantities, in other words what is made up of very distinct units. Quality cannot be quantified, because each element that is added to the whole blends into it and influences and transforms all the others. Quality is a diffuse intensity. Appreciating the quality of an employee would therefore mean not reducing it to purely quantitative objectives, which are certainly necessary to evaluate, but not sufficient. Estimating the quality of an employee would also consist of feeling the intensity he puts into his work, in other words his energy, his enthusiasm, his will, his endurance, his desire to stay or leave, without objectifying it. This intensity can only be understood by speaking the truth, by experiencing an authentic moment, by experiencing what the person opposite allows to happen, and certainly not in front of a grid, a multiple choice question, slides, screens, which reassure the examiner with the objectivity that these supports claim to provide and the void that they wrongly believe to fill. The pitfall of these evaluation procedures is that they are generally content to examine individuals through frameworks and criteria which are more suited to external things than to the life of the mind, which cannot be reduced to a succession of very distinct actions and moments.
In short, these EAEs for the most part do not allow you to manage, nor to evaluate qualitatively, nor to know anyone. So what’s the point of imposing them on employees and managers every year? Let’s delete them. Let us appreciate ourselves far from the boxes and intrusive reading grids. Let’s find words and moments that speak for themselves. Let’s open business language to common clarity. Let’s make working relationships simple and frank. Let’s replace the procedural conversations that an AI could lead with more friendly humanized exchanges, and let’s replace this abhorred time of the year with regular long-term support.
* Julia de Funès is a doctor of philosophy
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