The Case FOR Self-Reviews

The Case FOR Employee Self-Reviews: Why Self-Assessment Builds Better Organizations

A Response to "5 Reasons to Eliminate the Self-Review"

By Kevin Earnest, Manageable

While critics argue that self-reviews waste time and introduce bias, the opposite is true: properly implemented self-assessments are essential to effective performance management. Organizations that eliminate self-reviews lose a critical opportunity to build self-awareness, engage employees, and develop a culture of accountability and growth.

Why Self-Reviews Are Essential

The argument against self-reviews rests on flawed assumptions about their purpose and implementation. When done correctly, self-assessments don't compete with manager assessments—they complement them. Here's why organizations should strengthen, not eliminate, their self-review processes.

1: Self-Assessment Develops Critical Self-Awareness

Elliott Jaques, the pioneering organizational psychologist, demonstrated that employees working at their appropriate level of cognitive capability need opportunities to reflect on and articulate their own work. Self-assessment isn't about influencing the rating—it's about developing the metacognitive skills essential for growth.

When employees regularly assess their own performance, they develop the capacity to see their work objectively, identify patterns in their behavior, and take ownership of their development. This self-awareness is the foundation of professional maturity. Organizations that deny employees this practice inadvertently keep them dependent on external judgment rather than cultivating internal standards of excellence.

The research is clear: self-reflection enhances learning and performance improvement. Employees who engage in structured self-assessment show greater goal attainment and are more likely to seek developmental feedback throughout the year, not just during review season.

2: Transparency About Process Enables Meaningful Dialogue

The criticism that employees "mistakenly believe their input counts" reveals a process design problem, not a self-review problem. The solution isn't to eliminate self-assessments—it's to be transparent about their purpose.

When organizations clearly communicate that self-reviews serve as conversation starters and developmental tools rather than rating inputs, employees can engage authentically. The self-review becomes what it should be: an opportunity for employees to reflect on their year, articulate their perspective, and prepare for a meaningful dialogue with their manager.

This transparency actually builds trust. Employees appreciate clarity about process. What destroys trust is asking for input under false pretenses or, worse, removing their voice entirely from the process.

3: Multiple Perspectives Reduce Bias, Not Increase It

The assertion that self-reviews "introduce bias" misunderstands how bias works in assessment systems. Every single observer brings bias—managers included. Managers exhibit recency bias, similarity bias, halo effects, and their own personality-driven assessment tendencies.

The answer to bias isn't to rely solely on the manager's perspective—it's to triangulate multiple perspectives, including the employee's self-assessment. When managers compare their observations with employee self-perceptions, the gaps themselves provide valuable diagnostic information about self-awareness, communication effectiveness, and potential blind spots.

Yes, personality and language proficiency affect how people present themselves. But these same factors affect how managers perceive and evaluate employees. The solution is training both managers and employees in effective assessment practices, not eliminating one perspective entirely.

4: The Self-Other Gap Is Valuable Development Data

Research showing that self-assessments can be inaccurate is presented as evidence against self-reviews. In fact, it's evidence for them.

The gap between self-perception and others' perceptions isn't a problem to avoid—it's critical development data. When a high performer underrates themselves, that signals potential confidence issues or imposter syndrome that a skilled manager can address. When a struggling employee overrates themselves, that reveals a self-awareness gap that's essential to address for their growth.

Skilled managers don't view the self-other gap as creating a "contentious" conversation. They view it as an opening for coaching. The conversation might go: "I notice you rated yourself as exceeding expectations here, while I observed some challenges. Let's talk about what each of us saw so we can align on what success looks like going forward."

This isn't confrontational—it's developmental. And yes, the research shows that feedback challenging self-perceptions can initially create discomfort. But that discomfort, when handled with skill, catalyzes growth.

5: Self-Reviews Strengthen Manager Accountability, Not Weaken It

The criticism that self-reviews "enable lazy managers" actually reveals their value. When employees submit self-assessments, it creates accountability for managers to be prepared with specific observations and examples.

A manager who relies entirely on their own memory without the benefit of the employee's documented accomplishments is more likely to forget key contributions, particularly for quieter employees or those earlier in the review cycle. The self-review ensures that important work doesn't get lost and that managers come to review conversations with complete information.

Moreover, in organizations with broad spans of control—which are increasingly common—expecting managers to remember every detail of every employee's contributions throughout the year is unrealistic. The self-review isn't a crutch for poor management; it's a practical tool for thorough assessment.

The Role of Skip-Level Managers in Development

The strongest performance management systems involve skip-level managers meaningfully in talent assessment and development. Research consistently shows that when employees know their manager's manager is involved in reviewing their performance and potential, several positive outcomes emerge:

Higher perceived fairness: Employees trust that assessments are more balanced when multiple levels of leadership are engaged.

Greater development focus: Skip-level involvement signals that the organization invests in long-term talent development, not just immediate performance management.

Increased engagement: Employees report higher engagement when they feel visible to senior leadership and when their development matters beyond their immediate manager.

Better calibration: Skip-level managers provide important context and can identify high-potential employees who might be undersold by modest managers or overlooked in teams where everyone appears strong.

Elliott Jaques' work on requisite organization emphasizes that managers at each level should work at the appropriate time horizon for their role. Skip-level managers, operating at longer time horizons, naturally focus on employee potential and long-term development in ways that complement the immediate manager's focus on current performance.

What Effective Self-Review Looks Like

Organizations that implement self-reviews effectively follow several principles:

Clear purpose: Communicate that self-reviews develop self-awareness and inform dialogue, not determine ratings.

Structured prompts: Provide specific questions that guide reflection on accomplishments, challenges, development, and future goals rather than asking for open-ended self-ratings.

Manager integration: Train managers to use self-reviews as conversation tools, exploring gaps between perspectives rather than dismissing employee input.

Developmental focus: Frame self-assessment as preparation for growth conversations, not performance justification.

Ongoing practice: Encourage brief self-reflection throughout the year, not just annual lengthy documents.

The Real Problem: Poor Implementation, Not Self-Reviews

The issues critics identify—wasted time, false expectations, contentious conversations—stem from poor process design, not from self-assessment itself. Organizations that frame self-reviews as rating negotiations, that aren't transparent about their purpose, or that don't train managers in developmental dialogue will indeed experience these problems.

But the solution is better implementation, not elimination. Self-reviews done well create more engaged employees, more effective development conversations, and stronger organizational capability.

Conclusion: Voice AND Vote

Employees should indeed have a voice in their performance reviews. But that voice shouldn't be limited to reacting to their manager's assessment—it should include structured opportunities to reflect on their own performance and development.

The goal isn't to give employees a "vote" that overrides their manager's assessment. The goal is to build organizations where employees are active participants in their own development, where multiple perspectives inform better decisions, and where self-awareness is cultivated as a core professional capability.

Eliminating self-reviews eliminates one of the few structured opportunities organizations provide for employees to practice reflective thinking about their work. That's a significant loss for any organization serious about developing talent.

The choice isn't between employee voice and manager accountability. Properly designed self-reviews strengthen both.

References:

Jaques, E. (1996). Requisite Organization: A Total System for Effective Managerial Organization and Managerial Leadership for the 21st Century. Cason Hall & Co.

Ashford, S. J., & Tsui, A. S. (1991). Self-regulation for managerial effectiveness: The role of active feedback seeking. Academy of Management Journal, 34(2), 251-280.

Schippers, M. C., Scheepers, A. W., & Peterson, J. B. (2015). A scalable goal-setting intervention closes both the gender and ethnic minority achievement gap. Palgrave Communications, 1(1), 1-12.