to senior management, 19.1% awarded as much to employees at the management level, 19.7% awarded it to non-management salaried exempt employees, 20.6% A peek at the maximum increase tied to a performance scale of 1–5 shows that 20.1% Performance management: 8.4%. MORE

That's much harder to achieve if your CEO is not well known or respected by employees. Positive visibility should help, and one reliable channel is end-of-year communications about pay practices, bonus awards, company results, team achievements and so on. MORE

Perhaps you have heard the following concept in a conversation about performance management, ratings, and the subsequent compensation decisions: “When compared externally , we’re a superior company. In this case, variable remuneration is therefore commission-based and not bonus-based. MORE

The reasons may be seem obscure to outsiders, but they are clear to those who follow the arcane practices of the wage and salary management field. There is no one weather report that applies equally well to all employers in all locations in all circumstances. MORE

Buckingham dealt less with the more formal aspects of performance management but it’s this that was covered extensively in the Harvard Business Review. Actual performance accounts for only 21% of the variance. So traditional performance reviews are clearly very unlikely to work. MORE

In recent times, many companies euphorically and rather media-effectively jumped on the bandwagon of abolishing performance ratings. Most, however, were still trying to hang onto their legacy pay-for-performance concepts based on individual objectives. MORE

If you’re a small or midsize business (SMB) that does annual performance reviews, I have some terrible news. Annual performance reviews are dead. A staple of performance management since the 1950s, gone forever. Jump to: What should stay: Performance ratings. MORE