I know I can’t be the only one who has seen a performance review process go horribly wrong. Sometimes it’s laughable, yet other times it is frustrating to be caught in the midst of a broken system. Check out the video below to hear about the time I had a “secret” review as a wrestling referee.

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Video Notes

A few years ago I spent my winter months as a part time referee for high school wrestling. One day I got an email from our district manager, so I pulled it up expecting to see a schedule. Instead I found a performance review that one of the officials had done without my knowledge! “Secret” reviews are a bad plan for several reasons.

• No accountability of reviewer
• No opportunity for reviewed to comment/clarify
• No opportunity to grow from critical feedback

All in all, it’s a bad plan! Do you have any stories of a performance review process gone wrong? I’d love to hear about it!

At Sonar6, we love performance reviews (obviously) and we love any sort of discussion on the topic. So we’re proud to help bring you this series of posts from upstartHR. They’re very nearly as cool as our award winning color paper series.

Check out the video below for some really neat insights into the culture where I work and how we value hiring team players over “A” players. The highlights:

• No showoffs
• Delayed gratification
• Everyone gets a chance to shine

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Recently I had the opportunity to visit Washington D.C. to work with the Society for Human Resources Management and a great team of individual contributors on SHRM’s social media tool, SHRM Connect. While some of us have criticized SHRM for moving slowly at times, it looks like they are making great strides on this project.

Check out the video below for more information.

I’ve done my share of talking here, but I’m curious to know more about you and what you expect from the blog. What topics do you enjoy? What would it thrill you for me to cover?

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Feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email to ben@upstarthr.com to talk privately. Also, if you are interested in me coming to speak to your group (or doing a webinar), reach out to me as well. I’m picking up more of these as time goes on and I really enjoy the opportunities.

I am a firm believer in work safety, but not in the traditional, dry, boring sense. Let’s make things interesting. I want someone to feel just as safe in the workplace as they are at home. But to get people to pay attention to the safety rules and processes, you’re going to need something more than a pamphlet to hand out to everyone. Check out the video below for more.

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Are you stuck on how to make something “fun” at work? Leave a note in the comments and I’ll give you an example or two.

Do you recruit your stars or grow them from within? Do you build talent pools and pipelines or just run out and “grab” whatever you need from the market?

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