A Practical Guide to Dropping Ratings

If you work at company that still conducts traditional performance reviews, you’re likely knee-deep in end-of-year performance evaluations as you read this post. I feel your pain. No one wants to go through the process of justifying a year’s worth of work. And HR could certainly do with less paperwork.

One of the more painful aspects of the whole process is ranking employees. How do you explain the difference between a 3 and a 4 and a 5? At a former company, my manager told me, “Don’t worry,...