Development Plans Replace Performance Reviews at Harvey Hotels

Abstract

Harvey Hotels has exchanged traditional performance- review procedures and forms for goals-based employee evaluations called Personal Development Plans (PDP). The process involves a cycle of setting and achieving clear-cut objectives that point the way to perfection, and not to minimum standards of performance. Managers set the goals, and then must show the employees how to achieve them. Managers meet semi-annually or even quarterly with employees to discuss each goal's perfor- mance, and the results are recorded on the PDP. Goals not achieved are carried forward to a new PDP, along with strategies for achieving them. Then, the manager and employee add entirely new goals to another PDP and the process begins anew. Use of the PDP has resulted in direction and guidance for employees, mentoring relationships, high standards of performance, customized training programs, better-informed hiring decisions, and less turnover.