According to an organization called the "The Conference Board" just 45% of workers are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% in 1987.
While the usual culprits are responsible for this decline (bad bosses, job insecurity, a rotten and decaying ecchonomy) Samuel A. Culbert, a clinical psychologist at UCLA says too many people work in "toxic" environments. His new book casts an interesting light on what Culbert believes are some of the causes of this toxicity, it's called "Get Rid of the Performance Review!" http://www.performancepreview.com/ His website proclaims: "It's time to put the performance review out of its misery."
Culbert states: "The performance review. It is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities. We all hate it. And yet nobody does anything about it."
Culbert's site also has a quiz: "How much do you hate performance reviews?" http://www.performancepreview.com/survey.html
which you can take right here.
Now, here's the thing. Performance reviews are a concoction of HR. What the fuck does HR do but intimidate, frustrate, bog down with rules and cost money. While we're eliminating reviews, let's kill HR.
