The pros and cons of peer review

The tra­di­tion­al year­ly per­for­mance appraisal process has long been crit­i­cised for its slow feed­back loop in an increas­ing­ly fast-mov­ing work­ing world. It fails, as well, because all too often the process ends up being a nego­ti­a­tion around pro­mo­tion and pay, rather than a dis­cus­sion about per­for­mance and devel­op­ment. Plus it is all too easy for bias to come in, with dis­cus­sions typ­i­cal­ly by just one per­son, someone’s man­ag­er.

Yet the year­ly review remains a core part of many com­pa­nies’ per­for­mance man­age­ment, in part because a bet­ter alter­na­tive is hard to find.

But with the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic lead­ing to large num­bers of peo­ple work­ing remote­ly, result­ing in less dai­ly inter­ac­tion with man­agers, it has become increas­ing­ly impor­tant to intro­duce change and cre­ate a more demo­c­ra­t­ic feed­back process. 

The likes of Google and Net­flix have already made moves in this direc­tion, with the aim of under­stand­ing employ­ees’ per­for­mance and behav­iour­al atti­tude from the view­point of peo­ple they work with reg­u­lar­ly, which might include col­leagues, peers and oth­er man­agers.

The role of line man­agers becomes one of aggre­gat­ing and sum­maris­ing this feed­back – 50 or more inputs per employ­ee a year – as part of an ongo­ing per­for­mance eval­u­a­tion process, which is focused pure­ly on per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment.

So does this approach have legs beyond the world of Big Tech? Iain Thom­son, direc­tor of incen­tive and recog­ni­tion at employ­ee and con­sumer engage­ment spe­cial­ists Sodexo Engage, believes it does. While peer reviews have to date tak­en place pre­dom­i­nant­ly at the man­age­ment lev­el in the form of 360-degree appraisals, there is a case to be made for intro­duc­ing feed­back more wide­ly across all lev­els of the organ­i­sa­tion.

“When done well, if you get broad feed­back from dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple, you can learn far more about your­self than you would from just man­ag­er-to-sub­or­di­nate input,” says Thom­son. “And from a manager’s view­point, it can help to give a more accu­rate pic­ture of an employee’s per­for­mance, enabling you to iden­ti­fy pat­terns that indi­cate an issue you could man­age and steer them through.” 

Evaluating the peer review process

Jason Lau­rit­sen, peo­ple man­age­ment advis­er and author of Unlock­ing High Per­for­mance, like­wise believes a well-designed peer review process can be ben­e­fi­cial.

“Peers who fre­quent­ly work togeth­er have a much bet­ter van­tage point to observe an individual’s true con­tri­bu­tions and impact than their man­ag­er,” he points out. “They also feel the impact of per­for­mance or skills gaps more direct­ly and bet­ter qual­i­ty feed­back, in the­o­ry, should lead to improved future per­for­mance.”

But there are down­sides to this kind of approach too. A key chal­lenge involves obtain­ing con­struc­tive feed­back that is hon­est rather than polite, but is not so direct and per­son­al it could dam­age rela­tion­ships between col­leagues. 

Neu­ro­science sug­gests the human brain responds to “social” threats in a sim­i­lar way to phys­i­cal ones. Lau­rit­sen explains this means peo­ple tend to “react defen­sive­ly to crit­i­cal feed­back”, par­tic­u­lar­ly if they con­sid­er it unjust or a threat to their social sta­tus at work, a sit­u­a­tion that can result in “last­ing dam­age to our abil­i­ty to trust one anoth­er and work effec­tive­ly togeth­er in future”.

Anoth­er con­cern, accord­ing to Jo Tay­lor, man­ag­ing direc­tor of human resources con­sul­tan­cy Let’s Talk Tal­ent, is ensur­ing input is objec­tive and fair, and that peo­ple do not end up being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against, bul­lied or “harassed through feed­back”, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the case of a con­tin­u­al feed­back cul­ture.

A fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion, mean­while, is sim­ply the time and effort it takes for man­agers to deal with high vol­umes of data com­ing in reg­u­lar­ly from numer­ous sources.

“I don’t see how it could work unless you make it very app-dri­ven and base it on tick box­es and smi­ley faces, but how much val­ue does that kind of response offer?” posits Tay­lor. “So it’s about going back to basics, under­stand­ing what the end-game is and ask­ing for feed­back on that basis. Is it about being hon­est and trans­par­ent, is it about engage­ment and moti­va­tion? What’s the ques­tion?”

How to get the process right

Karen Plum, direc­tor of research and devel­op­ment at con­sul­tan­cy Advanced Work­place Asso­ciates, says: “It all comes back to objec­tives and vision, so what’s the aim behind doing it or is it sim­ply putting lip­stick on a pig?” she asks. “There’s not much point if you haven’t the right cul­ture and man­age­ment prac­tices in the first place to help peo­ple grow and devel­op.”

Just what such an envi­ron­ment might look like, Nathalie Cousseau, HR direc­tor at IT con­sul­tan­cy Avanade, believes it is one based on “trust, hon­esty and open­ness”, a sce­nario that for most employ­ers “takes time to embed”. 

In this con­text, pro­vid­ing both man­agers and employ­ees with train­ing on how to give and receive feed­back using a con­struc­tive, devel­op­ment-focused approach can help. But Cousseau also advis­es against swamp­ing peo­ple with “feed­back-itus”. 

“There’s no point ask­ing every­one for feed­back on every sin­gle inter­ac­tion as it just builds fatigue, so it’s impor­tant to iden­ti­fy those moments where it’ll be of ben­e­fit, for exam­ple after a pre­sen­ta­tion or a project has been com­plet­ed,” she says. “It’s not a num­bers game; it’s about obtain­ing feed­back at the right time for learn­ing and growth.”

Lau­rit­sen agrees. While he expects ongo­ing per­for­mance con­ver­sa­tions to increas­ing­ly become the norm, he does not antic­i­pate for­mal peer review process­es, social­ly based or oth­er­wise, to become com­mon prac­tice. Instead he pre­dicts there will be a con­tin­ued focus among employ­ers on “fos­ter­ing more fre­quent peer-to-peer feed­back, par­tic­u­lar­ly feed­back and recog­ni­tion”. 

“It will be about post­ing pos­i­tive acco­lades to the company’s recog­ni­tion plat­form or par­tic­i­pat­ing in a struc­tured debrief at the end of a project,” says Lau­rit­sen. “So it will be peer feed­back in the flow of work rather than as a for­mal process.”