‘Lots of people assume that managers just know how to do this stuff,’ says academic explaining that manager training and timing are as important in performance reviews as metrics and ratings
Amazon has moved to a more tightly structured performance review process, now asking corporate employees to list specific examples of their accomplishments and goals.
Business Insider reported that as part of its “Forte” process, Amazon is requiring corporate employees to list three to five achievements, with specific examples of what they did and how they plan to continue growing at the company.
However, the performance review process will still rely heavily on formal year-end assessments that feed into an overall rating and pay framework.
Training managers to give effective feedback
Amazon’s managers are expected to use inputs like accomplishments, peer feedback and leadership principles to assign an overall rating. According to Christian Cook, professor of human resources at Mount Royal University, these requirements point to a common gap in performance review programs that employers often overlook: the fact that many managers don’t know how to give effective feedback.
“Sometimes we as leaders aren't providing training to managers [on how] to have these conversations, and sometimes they're as scared as the employee to have this conversation,” she says, recommending more hands-on learning such as structured practice sessions.
“Lots of people assume that managers just know how to do this stuff. It's one thing to read a briefing note. It's a deeper level of understanding for them to do something like a role-play, maybe in front of another group of managers, where they can all see where the flaws could come up and then also get an opportunity to get better at delivering feedback.”
Failing to train leaders undermines both sides of the table, Cook says, noting that “nobody likes to deliver negative feedback” but that it is essential for employee growth as the quality of critiques largely depends on whether managers are equipped to have hard conversations.
Performance review systems must match innovation goals
Amazon’s internal guideline encourages employees to consider situations where they “took risks or innovated, even if it didn't lead to the results you hoped for.”
As Cook points out, that message assumes the organization is willing to tolerate some failure in pursuit of innovation – but she warns that not all performance systems are compatible with such ambitions, especially if they resemble older “rank and yank” models that weed out low performers.
In her view, organizations cannot credibly encourage employees to pursue big ideas if missteps are punished in ratings, bonuses or job security.
“You can't be innovative in a culture that punishes failure,” Cook says – if risk appetite is low and failures are penalized, workers will quickly adjust, regardless of what guidelines say about valuing innovation.
“Think about the way in which we're having conversations [about] which things we're trying to reinforce with employees,” she says.
“We need to be mindful about all the things that an employee is going to read into this, beyond just the form.”
Avoiding ‘gotcha’ reviews through ongoing coaching
Overall, the mechanics of performance reviews matter less than how managers and their reports behave throughout the year, says Cook.
An enduring weakness of conventional reviews, she stresses, is the timing and content of feedback, that can turn what could be a useful recap into a once-a-year download of issues that could have been addressed months earlier.
“They sit down and they're hearing information for the first time, which means there's something wrong with the process,” Cook says, adding that this pattern can feed the sense that performance reviews “are kind of this gotcha moment,” fuelling anxiety rather than supporting development.
For employers wanting to shift to more accomplishment-driven review models, Cook suggests using annual review conversations to synthesize and celebrate, not just surface problems for the first time.
“I think that good managers, good organizations, are doing what I call ‘coaching in the moment,’” she says, “before it's become a super-ingrained habit, and while we can still fix it.”
Recency and visibility bias in performance reviews
Amazon’s focus on what employees accomplished in the past year may help anchor reviews in concrete work, but it does not remove the risk of bias, Cook says, pointing to “recency bias” as a particular problem in annual processes, “especially if we haven't documented throughout the year, but we're probably going to focus on the things that are leading up to the appraisal.”
Recency bias can lead to inflated or deflated ratings, based on what happened in the final weeks before the review, and Cook reminds employers that some employees will change behaviour strategically during the period before a review.
Visibility bias is also a factor, where employees who make a show of busyness are rewarded over those quietly delivering results; Cook says managers need to “disentangle that from what good performance actually is,” or risk overrewarding noise at the expense of genuine contribution.
Balancing results, behaviour and long-term talent needs
Amazon’s approach asks employees to nominate their own top accomplishments, which can give them a voice in the process and also highlight work that might otherwise be missed.
These outcomes can be useful, Cook says, but there are caveats – she notes that there can be a disconnect between what employees choose to highlight versus what managers expect.
“Something has broken in the system where … even though it's an amazing accomplishment, the manager might be saying, ‘Well, that's amazing, but this base part of your job, it doesn't look like you had any accomplishments there,’” says Cook.
“Even when we say, ‘This will be a little bit open-ended, what are your biggest accomplishments?’ tie them to something, because otherwise you've introduced this lack of clarity for employees.”
Cook also connects performance review systems to longterm workforce needs, such as mentoring newer staff in an aging labour market: if mentoring and knowledge transfer matter, she says, performance reviews and compensation structures should reflect that by recognizing and rewarding that work.
“We need many more people to be providing mentorship to our new staff members,” Cook says, but adds that those activities may not show up in shortterm sales or output metrics.
“People aren't going to do that if they're in a results-only culture where they're actually going to lose money on their commission and be out-of-pocket for being a mentor to some new colleagues.”
