The latest surveys show that today’s modern Millennials detest annual performance reviews. These traditional types of yearly reports can be detrimental to your future workforce. Millennials are defined as those born after 1982, and they are the future of our great corporations.
Why They Don’t Like Annual Performance Reviews
Here are the top reasons why Millennials want companies to reconsider traditional annual performance reviews.
- Undermine Confidence – Studies show that over 60 percent of Millennials feel “blindsided” by annual performance reviews. Going one step further, nearly 75 percent say they were unaware of how their peers and managers felt about their performance. Since these types of discussions generally only focus on the negative and not the positive, almost 50 percent say that traditional reviews make them feel as though they can’t do anything right.
- Anxiety and Mistrust – Infrequent performance reviews can be overwhelming, and since it takes one year of data and compiles it into a one-hour discussion, many employees do not trust the accuracy of these reviews. Nearly 25 percent of Millennial employees have reported calling in sick with anxiety about their upcoming reviews. Almost 60 percent say that their managers are not prepared to provide helpful feedback during these discussions.
- Lowers Morale – Because poor performance reviews can negatively affect morale, surveys show that these are the results of holding these traditional meetings.
- Approximately 25 percent start looking for a new job
- 35 percent of employees begin complaining to coworkers
- 15 percent of employees cry or swear
So, what can your company do to institute more helpful feedback that attracts talented young Millennials?
Instead of only holding a review annually, Millennials report that more frequent performance reviews would improve their professional development and growth. Nearly 85 percent of Millennial employees would prefer these highlights in more frequent reviews.
- 40 percent would like to see more specific feedback instead of vague performance results that don’t give them information about how to improve their current performance.
- 32 percent don’t like having a one-sided review and would prefer it includes open dialogue.
- 32 percent believe that annual reviews are detrimental because they replace regular, ongoing feedback.
- 31 percent feel that the feedback they receive is unfair.
Try to implement more regular feedback instead of only relying on annual reviews. This will help you attract and retain more qualified, happy employees. After all, employees that enjoy their jobs are more apt to stay longer and produce better results.
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