Writing Performance Reviews: From Tedious Frustration to Effortless Generation

Performance reviews so easy they seem to write themselves – once a dream, now a reality. 

With the language capabilities of A.I. found in Hindsight365, the process of writing performance reviews is no longer a struggle to find new ways of saying the same old thing – it’s simply a matter of clicking your mouse on the right spot on the screen. 

So let’s think about that for a moment – when you click that mouse, what do you have? 

Well, the view from 20,000 feet: you have a first draft with all the qualities of a finished product. That doesn’t mean you’re committed to its content – but it gives you a “starting point” that’s really better characterized as a “comprehensive framework,” incorporating a reasoned analysis of all the inputs that have been collected over the relevant time frame. And if the time you can devote to generating performance reviews is limited, you can rely on that first draft – because it constitutes an accurate distillation from many viewpoints of an employee’s body of work. 

But it’s more than just a random distillation. Because this “first draft” is not dependent on one manager’s writing skills or analytical tendencies, but is rather derived by applying the same algorithmic process to each and every review generated, it offers conclusions that are consistent across managers, departments, and indeed the whole organization. Such consistency eliminates the personal bias that can infect performance reviews tainted by unsupported opinions or irregular styles (whether conscious or unconscious) of managers trying to generalize from, say, a year’s worth of observations. At the same time, those underlying algorithms can be tailored to reflect an emphasis on characteristics and capabilities that a company seeks to cultivate – building in what might be called a “positive bias” that searches for and identifies qualities that lead to success both for the employee and for the organization – and presented in the format of a template that you have the flexibility to modify. 

Moreover, by generating what might be thought of as a “rational boilerplate” performance review, Hindsight365 saves time while still allowing for the “human touch” – the manager isn’t locked in to the conclusions of the program, but can edit and revise the boilerplate to reflect elements that an algorithm, however efficient it may be, has perhaps missed.  

So you’re not at the mercy of an algorithm – but neither are you any longer at the mercy of time constraints or priority conflicts that have, in the past, rendered the entire performance review process an unwelcome burden. It’s like having a talented, neutral, and thorough assistant to handle the “grunt work” of knocking out performance reviews, while retaining control over the finer aspects of a polished version. 

Ashtin Givens

Client Relationship Manager for Garnet River

& Consultant for Hindsight365

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