Google’s Senior VP tells you how Performance Management works best

Performance reviews are important for any enterprise, but they're often tedious and unproductive. To tackle this, Google adopted an internal grading system in the early 2000s called the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

Here, employees set goals for themselves and set a stream of results that would help reach that goal. It is the first step in Google's performance management exercise.

In his book ‘Work Rules!’ Google's senior vice president of People Operations Laszlo Bock has summarized the rest of the procedures as:

Gauging Productivity
Google Employees are rated by their managers on a five-point scale here

Requesting for peer feedback
Employees and managers selected a group of peer reviewers that included juniors who issued feedback.

The reviewers list one thing the reviewed should do more of and one thing he/she could do differently.

Carefully assess
Teams of managers meet and review Googlers’ tentative ratings together. This process is used to lessen managers' bias because they justify their decisions.

Managers are alerted of what constitutes potential biases. This includes recency effect. Keeping such factors in mind they decide employee ratings.

Reviews and discussions on money are discussed separately
Annual reviews in Google takes place in November while pay discussions happen around a month later.
The motivation here is that employees want to improve to contribute more to the company, and not just for more money.

(Image credit: Indiatimes)