A lot of articles recommend against formal performance reviews, and in some sense I agree, but it is important to be thoughtful about how you're going to give feedback and work with your employees to help them perform more effectively.
Oftentimes formal performance reviews are replaced with some sort of continual feedback system (whether through an actual formal system or just an informal process), but in my experience a lot of continual feedback systems just turn into a back-patting machine and lose a lot of the constructive criticism that a formal review process can bring out.
Stack-ranking is obviously dumb, and yes, assigning things to a 5 point scale probably is too. But those were never the actually valuable parts of good reviews. You should always find a way to spend time and be thoughtful about where team members are excelling and where they're falling short.
I've worked a few jobs that decided that performance reviews were a pointless exercise and I honestly couldn't have told you what everyone thought of my performance prior to me leaving.
Oftentimes formal performance reviews are replaced with some sort of continual feedback system (whether through an actual formal system or just an informal process), but in my experience a lot of continual feedback systems just turn into a back-patting machine and lose a lot of the constructive criticism that a formal review process can bring out.
Stack-ranking is obviously dumb, and yes, assigning things to a 5 point scale probably is too. But those were never the actually valuable parts of good reviews. You should always find a way to spend time and be thoughtful about where team members are excelling and where they're falling short.
I've worked a few jobs that decided that performance reviews were a pointless exercise and I honestly couldn't have told you what everyone thought of my performance prior to me leaving.