Bryan Hawkins Quoted on Need for Thorough Documentation of Performance Reviews

In a recent article, Stoel Rives’ labor and employment partner and California offices managing partner Bryan Hawkins provided Bloomberg Law’s Daily Labor Report with his thoughts on the disadvantages for companies in moving from traditional annual performance reviews to regular, informal check-ins.

Driven in part by the desire of millennials and members of Generation Z for regular feedback and a responsive managerial style, large companies like Adobe Inc. and Deloitte, as well as other small to large-scale professional services and tech firms, are starting to offer frequent, informal reviews of their workers’ performance.

Hawkins said that though regular check-ins can be worthwhile, companies must be mindful of how often they are held because processing and analyzing the volume of feedback they generate can add “an extra layer of administrative burden to HR departments and employers.”

Hawkins also notes that the typically rigorous documenting of annual reviews, long a mainstay of employee management, can provide a company with evidence it can use to defend against or disprove allegations of unfair treatment or discrimination.

Read the full article here.