Readers React: If bosses evaluate employees, employees should evaluate bosses

To the editor: UCLA Professor Samuel Culbert should look in the mirror before tossing stones when he writes about corporations’ performance reviews of employees. (“Performance reviews are corporate America’s curse on itself,” Op-Ed, Feb. 12)

From first grade to college and beyond, teachers have always had ultimate control via the grade book. The higher the educational level, the greater the call for judgment in grading the student.

From a business perspective, I truly believe that a 360-degree process is beneficial, as is the opportunity for “skip level” reviews, whereby employees provide feedback on their bosses to their bosses’ boss.

Both academia and business have the same blind spot in empowering a single person to sit in judgment of another.

Dennis Fitzgerald, Manhattan Beach

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To the editor: Culbert’s article hammers repeatedly on the incalculable harm employee reviews cause. He overstates his point by saying that reviews are destructive, damage the relationship between bosses and employees, and practically force employees to be dishonest.

I’m surprised he doesn’t allege they lead to jaywalking and robbery.

He doesn’t mention, even once, the possibility of good reviews that acknowledge the countless wonderful employees who not only meet but exceed expectations. You certainly wouldn’t know of them reading this one-sided screed.

How sad that Culbert can’t even entertain the thought that an employer would look for the positive in a worker and officially note that.

Mark Diniakos, Thousand Oaks

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