Ask HN: HR performance management feedback tools used for backstabbing? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: HR performance management feedback tools used for backstabbing?

2 pointsfallinditch5 comments

The curse of anonymous employee feedback tools for performance management on your colleagues.

Background

I worked as a project manager for a smallish (~35 staff) Dev agency that used an HR platform for staffing matters including performance management.

As part of the performance management process employees were made to give anonymous feedback on their colleagues from time to time. This was not optional, we had to give the feedback.

We worked in small teams and so the feedback wasn't actually anonymous: most/all of the time it was obvious who it came from.

The feedback requests were presented and phrased in such a way that encouraged and sought negative feedback under the false premise of security via anonymity.

As a consequence the system was open to abuse and backstabbing.

As a PM my work to create a highly performing team with good dynamics was being undermined. From my perspective I felt that if someone had a problem with another person or issue then they should raise it directly.

I raised my concerns about the anonymous feedback system with the HO Delivery, who seemed nonplussed. I was puzzled, I could not understand why the organization was using such a harmful system.

I came to the conclusion that the system of anonymous feedback was actually used as a legal tool - to be used as evidence in a court of law for employment tribunals, should they arise.

Am I being naive here? Is it obvious and an open secret that this is why organizations seek negative employee feedback from colleagues?

Employee feedback systems can be useful, especially in larger organizations, for example for senior managers to gauge employee sentiment and ideas. But for small organizations anonymous employee feedback seems perverse.

What is your experience? What is the real purpose of these systems? Can it ever work well in small orgs?

Not an answer to your question, but some insights from an employee who sees it as my mission to hack every system.

As an employee, my approach to peer feedback to make sure that I write every piece of feedback ever provided about me by peers, in exchange for them either writing their own feedback or my offering to spend an hour writing detailed praise for them.

In 5 years, as far as I know, no piece of peer feedback has not been written by me.

Plenty of the comments have appeared word for word in my performance reviews. Entire paragraphs lifted to be used as part of my overall review. So some of it just seems like lazy management.

How is X doing? They have repeatedly crowdsourced that answer. Perhaps out of laziness. Perhaps out of ignorance.

This is a great approach. It's a lot like the tactics used for building consensus.

In general, any performance based metrics tracking tool, even something as innocent as Linear, can be used to back-stab employees.

This is a problem to fix with culture, not necessarily "better" software tools. The nature of HR is to prioritize employees that are giving more value to the bottom line even if those employees are wreaking havoc on others. Which obviously indicates how short-sighted HR tools / people always are.

If you feel strongly about this, establish clear boundaries on your team or talk to the founders (NOT HR). Growing employees is the most powerful metric long term, especially if you can trust them and they like working with you and their team.

Often, the original intent for such a system being deployed is positive and genuine. The person(s) wants to help improve culture and individual behavior.

However, the system doesn't stand alone. Giving and receiving good feedback is a skill. Coordinating, interpreting, and using it is a lot of work and generally it takes good managers to really make all this work. It's difficult and takes a lot of time.

So, when time gets tight or the good manager gets tired, everything will regress. At best it becomes a chore for everyone. At worst it becomes negative leverage used by HR or people with an agenda against you.

True. It's a complex way to measure performance, but I still hold onto my opinion that a system of anonymous feedback from a worker's colleagues is only ever of benefit to the employer when acting against the interests of the workers. Don't stand for it!

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