Is there a place for recognition in performance reviews?

One of the world’s most successful companies has announced they will no longer tolerate ‘brilliant jerks’. While it is not the terminology, we would usually use to refer to an employee, Atlassian have taken a stand against those people that deliver results for the company but are the co-workers no-one actually wants to co-work with.

In overhauling their performance reviews, Atlassian realised that their review process focussed heavily on what employees functionally deliver without as much consideration for what they contribute to colleagues and culture. There was limited evaluation in the process on how employees interact with their colleagues and really live the values in the workplace. Atlassian has now moved to realign the balance, with equal weighting on the cultural impacts an employee has on the organisation and their functional output.

 This is a great example of the growing expectation of companies that are looking for employees to bring their whole selves to work rather than just their job skills. Successful employee culture is powerfully human and that should be encouraged and rewarded.

 Most workplaces have undergone a significant change in the last 20 years. Everything from the way we communicate to the where we are located, the hours we work and how we work together has transformed. We have gone from sitting side-by-side, to sitting anywhere. From townhall meetings to Slack. From functional workplaces to emotionally considerate workplaces.

 This innovation has now reached performance reviews where companies are looking at relevant and equitable ways to ensure that employees are rewarded for total contribution not just deliverables.

“One of the things we wanted to make sure we accounted for was the ‘brilliant jerk’ — people who are extremely bright and talented with respect to the way they execute their role but aren’t necessarily concerned with the impact they have on others. We want to make sure our system prevented that.”

Atlassian’s global head of talent, Bek Chee, said it was “not about people being shuffled out” of the company, but “what it has allowed us to do is really de-bias the performance system” by taking into account an employee’s entire contribution.

Asked if it would be possible for someone who did well in their role to be outscored by someone who did poorly but was more likeable, she said, “Not really, because in order to get the highest level rating you have to meet the highest bar on all three factors. Those people would get the same rating.”

The interesting thing about this change in how employees are evaluated, is that it came from the employees themselves. They requested a grading on each element that is based on “growth mindset language” — rather than a number from 1-10, employees are deemed to either have had an “exceptional year”, a “great year” or an “off year”.

There is also the opportunity as part of the process for peer contribution. Peers can say if an employee has really had their back and support growth and achievement or if they have been challenging to work with.

 Appealing to the millennial and gen Y and Z crowd was “a huge part of this” said Ms Chee. “We know the next generation are very socially conscious, they have a different set of expectations. They’re kind of no-bullsh#t. They don’t want to hear a company say, ‘You can bring your whole self to work, we’re diverse, we’re socially conscious’, and not have that backed up.”

 This approach begs the question on how other companies can better use recognition to evaluate their employees. While number of recognitions given is not necessarily something you want as a hard KPI – this approach will likely lead to lots of inauthentic recognition to boost numbers – reviewing an employees’ overall performance, including their contribution to culture through recognition, gives a comprehensive evaluation of an employees’ overall contribution, not just their functional performance.

 And with workplace culture being such an important part of attracting and retaining talent, we think considering recognition activity as part of overall evaluation is a smart move.

 As Ms Chee says “I definitely think some people could look at a (performance review) system that has values and team and culture tied into it and get concerned, but we know from our own experience and research that these behaviours encourage collaboration and lead to high performance, it’s not just, ‘Oh they’re friendly and they smile.’”