According to Wikipedia, peer review is, “the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work.” While typically used to evaluate scholarly work in academia, peers reviews have found their way into the employee evaluation process.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Here’s a typical situation: its time for your annual review. Your boss sends a peer review form to eight of your co-workers, collects the data and then shares the results during your evaluation. Six peers give positive feedback and perhaps some constructive, respectful suggestions for improvement. Then two peers use the peer review as an opportunity to ZINGyou! Nasty comment after nasty comment about things that happened years ago, leaving you in tears.
You’ve just been zinged by a covert bully’s deadliest weapon – the back stab. You see, some bullies aren’t brave enough to give you negative feedback to your face but put an anonymous peer review form in front of them and you give them an opportunity to weld their “knife” over and over again. The victim is left feeling paranoid and beat up. Forget about the evaluation, even if the boss says not to worry about one or two (or a dozen) negative comments by the bully, the victim spends the rest of their life obsessing over who zinged her.
Peer reviews shouldn’t be used in small groups.
Peer reviews are not meant to be used within departments, units, or within teams. It’s a cowards approach to giving feedback both positive and negative. If I have an issue with the way Amy always interrupts me during our monthly meetings, I need to approach Amy respectfully right after the meeting (“Amy. I’m not sure you realize this but every time I speak, you interrupt me….”) – not wait until it’s time for Amy’s annual review (“Amy is rude, abrasive, always interrupts and oh yeah….she’s has bad breath too!…..”).
Instead, people who work within a department should learn the skill of giving real-time face-to-face feedback. How? It’s a skill that can be learned. How do I know? Because I and many others teach nurses/groups how to be open to feedback and how to give feedback respectfully.
When peer reviews should be used.
Peer reviews should be used when you are trying to get feedback across a larger customer base with people you don’t directly work with but need to interact with.
For example, I used to be a corporate director in a large health system. My “customers” where the CNOs, Directors of Education, and the Deans of the local schools of nursing. I developed programs involving student and new nurses and was responsible for the professional development of over 10,000 nurses. Sending a peer review to a sampling of my customers was appropriate. Why? Because I didn’t work when the CNOs and Deans everyday but did interact with them using a variety of channels – email, meetings, phone calls, etc.
It was important to get their feedback on my interactions over time using multiple channels. Their respectful feedback reinforced that I was a good communicator but also uncovered that I needed to ask for their input more often. I can live with that. Because I wasn’t directly working with them, using the peer review form was appropriate.
Okay. I know that just because I blogged my opinion about peer reviews doesn’t mean that peer reviews within departments will stop today (although I’m an optimist). So, if you get asked to review someone whom you work with every day, use the opportunity to respectfully give feedback – positive feedback. If you have “issues” with this person, have a conversation real time. Don’t wait until an annual review to tell him/her things that happened 10 months ago. Do the right thing – no matter what.
Thanks for reading. I welcome comments and would be interested in knowing about your experience with peer reviews!
Take care and stay connected
Renee
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