“What is management for?” asked the front page of L’Express on November 10, 1969, when “the word and the thing that arrived from America after the war” were in their infancy in French companies. Fifty-five years later, management, its teaching and practice are everywhere. In open spaces, sport, administration, business schools, bookstores and sometimes even in places where you don’t expect it, like these training courses which offer “working on foot with a horse to strengthen cohesion teamwork and rapid decision-making. Coaching galorepopular HR gadget tools, personal development books… Never have executives been so inundated with speeches and pseudo-techniques supposed to make their jobs easier.
Like all human and social sciences, management does not necessarily lend itself to hard sciences. But the numerous research studies published over the past half century – and too often ignored by companies – shed light on which methods have proven themselves and which have not. L’Express reviews some of them. In this sixth episode, it’s time for annual interviews.
EPISODE 1. From Teams to WhatsApp… The damage notifications have on our concentration at work
EPISODE 2. MBTI, Disc, enneagram: the great scam of personality tests in management
EPISODE 3. Active listening, a technique that has its limits
EPISODE 4. Is all feedback good to give or receive?
EPISODE 5. Meetings: when brainstorming sessions produce zero ideas
EPISODE 7. PowerPoint: What Makes a Successful (or Failed) Presentation, According to Experts
In the space of two decades, the annual appraisal interview has established itself as an essential part of the business world. “It became widespread at the end of the 1990s, at a time when many managers did not give feedback and where there was this desire to provide almost obligatory time for managers and employees to discuss the issues of their mission and their needs”, indicates Dominique Duquesnoy, general director of PerformanSe, a company specializing in psychological tests.
66 to 95% of those questioned said they were unhappy with it
Over time, it has above all become a catch-all integrating a multitude of contradictory objectives: providing feedback in order to identify problems and successes, anticipating future objectives, negotiating remuneration and the work plan. career, etc. “These interviews bring together asymmetrical objectives, such as the need for objective evaluation – what the employee knows how to do or not, where he needs to progress – which translates into career or salary development, and that of the empathetic listening aimed at listening to the problems and needs of the employee in order to reassure or motivate them, but the two are incompatible,” assures Jean Pralong, professor of psychology and researcher in human resources management. Integrating the question of remuneration appears particularly problematic, since if the employee often relies on the annual interview, the final choice does not always belong to the manager who gives him the interview. “We spend the year saying to ourselves: ‘we’ll talk about it during the annual interview!’, so the employee arrives with a little guide, except that he often hears himself say ‘I don’t have the power decision on that’, which generates a lot of disappointment”, continues the professor.
The annual interview, presented as a solemn moment, turns out to be useless at best and counterproductive at worst. Numerous studies – including one published in 2018 in the journal Annual review of organizational psychology and organizational behavior – show that not only is it very expensive, but it also tends to disengage employees in addition to having no impact on performance. As a logical consequence, the exercise became almost unanimously hated. “Depending on how the question is formulated, 66 to 95% of those questioned say they are unhappy with it – both on the side of those being evaluated and that of the evaluators,” underlines Olivier Sibony, professor of strategies at HEC Paris, in his book You will rediscover management!
Wouldn’t the solution be to delete them? Many companies like Adobe, Accenture, Dell or Deloitte have already taken the plunge or evolved the format… Except that it is not always that simple. Particularly because companies need to document everyone’s performance, in the event of dismissal, for example. Specialists agree that it is necessary to better define it according to the desired objective. Performance evaluation, which remains important, can take the form of self-questionnaires or peer evaluations carried out monthly or weekly, or even biannual interviews. Above all, employee monitoring should, according to these experts, take the form of regular feedback, to address problems and blockages before it is too late.
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