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In speaking with a lot of people who are on their way out of a company, I noticed a pattern.  The breaking point that led many to their ultimate decision to leave was (a) they were not promoted to a management position and (b) they could not understand why someone else was.  Surprisingly, it was the latter that peeved people the most.

The issue here is transparency. There are lots of new and old strategies on how to hire, fire, and promote people, but there’s a common thread among them: a company must have specific and objective criteria that candidates have to meet in order to be promoted.

Having clear, objective, and well publicized criteria is important on a number of levels.  Employees need to, firstly, understand what they’re working towards.  In essence, it becomes a set of goals to achieve.  Secondly, employees need to know how they–and everyone else–will be evaluated, which is something a general policy of “you will be promoted for doing good work” does not provide.  A vague statement like this opens you, as the employer, up to constantly having to justify your promotion decisions, managing discontent from the rest of your employees who feel that the vague criteria allowed you to make a completely arbitrary decision, dealing with attrition that could result in you losing talented and vital employees, and possible legal claims of discrimination.

In fact, the U.S. Court of appeals has made many rulings on discrimination cases that stemmed from companies having overly subjective promotion standards.  In Paul Muller vs. United States Steel Corporation, the court stated that “The law is clear that a plaintiff in a job discrimination case need not prove that the employer had a specific intent to discriminate. It is sufficient that the employer’s conduct produced discriminatory results.” Therefore, even if you, as management, have no desire to show favoritism, if there are vague promotion policies that allow others to exhibit some kind of favoritism, you are still legally liable.  The judges’ decision mentions another case, Rowe vs. General Motors Corp., that was specifically about promotion.  The case was lost by the company because promotion “standards which were determined to be controlling are vague and subjective,” and “there [were] no safeguards in the procedure designed to avert discriminatory practices.”  Obviously, there is a HUGE leap to be made from subjective promotions to discrimination, but I wanted to hammer home the point that discontent bred from both can be serious–on a morale-dropping, practical and legal basis–and there is overwhelming encouragement for a firm to establish objectivity anyways.

The best way to deal with all the above-mentioned issues is to create a rubric that specifies as much as possible by way of what is necessary to get promoted.  Some tips:

• Be as specific as possible in the requirements – “Acquires 10 new clients every quarter” vs “Works diligently to acquire new clients”  The former delineates to your employees what they need to accomplish whereas the latter does not.
• Be reasonable with criteria – If you’re not careful, creating promotion criteria can become like creating a job posting–you list ridiculously impossible requirements and then wonder why no one is applying.  If your employees feel like the criteria is unattainable, they will stop trying altogether.  To keep yourself grounded, think about one or two successful people who hold or held the job and list the attributes or accomplishments that led to their success.
• Check in often so everyone knows where they stand – Have regular discussions with each direct report as to where they are in their requirements for a promotion and what they still need to work on.  This accomplishes two things: it shows your employees that you want to help them in their career development (a sort of “be all you can be”, corporate style), which motivates them to work harder (toward goals they see as tangible) and you are hence promoting the habits that make your company successful (if your requirements list is good).
• Be accountable for your standards – If an employee does meet all the requirements you have set out, you have to promote him/her.  If you toss your criteria out the window even once, you and your list lose credibility and respect immediately.  It’s worse than never having made an objective list.

On that note, criteria NOT to consider though it is still considered in many places:

• How long a person has worked in her current role
• How personable and likable she is (unless maybe she’s in sales…)

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Everyone who has a boss is at the very least mildly apprehensive about the annual review process.  It’s not so much that they fear they did poorly throughout the year (or that their boss will think so) but more so they are afraid that the review might hold some surprises — things they haven’t been told are wrong, things they haven’t thought of that could be wrong, and therefore things they wouldn’t know how to respond to.

HR departments always instruct managers to avoid said surprises, but not everyone takes that to heart.

In most firms, the annual review is the only formal review.  That means that if you, as a supervisor, have a particularly troublesome employee that you have been avoiding for most of the year but want to leave an official trace of the reason why you will probably be firing him come January, this is your only chance to do so.  Less extreme examples of the above also apply.  You’re very busy, or your subordinate is very independent and you have little interaction, or you are the sort of person that just usually keeps your opinions about subordinates’ performance to yourself, etc.  All those can lead to surprises on the review by the time your employee gets it.

So what should a manager do to not give their normally-well-performing direct reports a heart attack?  Well, ideally, you would have provided him feedback throughout the year so that you don’t write anything that shocks him.  However, if it’s already the week of Thanksgiving and you do not have a time machine, the second best thing is the following.

First write a draft of the review you’d like to submit.   Set up a time to discuss the review with your report and send her a copy of the draft a little before you meet, so that she has time to read and digest it.  In the meeting, talk about all the points on it and ask her how she feels about it.  Allow her to respond to what she thinks is unfair or an inappropriate assessment of her work.  Get a commitment from her to fix the things that need fixing.  Having done so, edit the draft from the perspective that you have already brought all these things to her attention and they are being worked on, which will instantly make the review milder.  Send that copy in for official record.

We peons will value that you didn’t just throw us to the wolves.

Even “bad” employees deserve a chance to look truth in the face before it comes back and bites them in the behind.  You never know, your gesture will show them that you care and it might make them want to reform.