Discussion at Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge:

What can we do to make performance reviews more productive and less distasteful? Should their objectives be scaled back to just one or two? Should they be disengaged from the determination of compensation and, if so, how?

Opinions run the gamut and I was surprised how many people favor forced [...]

Still looking for information about performance appraisals:

Do they improve performance by employees?
Do they work for managers?
How do they affect a company’s bottom line?

I’ve found a lot of opinions and impressions concerning questions 1 and 2 above, but no hard evidence, one way or the other, related to question 3.

Right now, I’m reading “Abolishing Performance Appraisals: [...]

More WorkUSA 2004 survey findings from Watson Wyatt (based on a survey of 1,191 US workers from a broad cross-section of industries):

Approximately 90 percent of surveyed employees participate in a performance management program.
Only 30 percent of employees believe the program helps them improve their performance.
Less than 40 percent say the system establishes clear performance goals [...]

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that performance appraisal systems hurt more than help. I’ve been looking for evidence performance review systems help or hurt the bottom line. A New York Times article by Kelley Holland entitled Performance Reviews: Many Need Improvement points to some interesting survey data:

“According to one study by Watson Wyatt, the human [...]