New requirements for the psychosocial work environment: Why dialogue matters more than ever
Eirin Eriksen Horvei
October 14, 2026
Ultimately, every organisation depends on its employees. That is why it should be a priority for organisations to look after their employees so that they can carry out their tasks well.
There are differences between the individuals who make up an organisation; some have better prerequisites for succeeding with their tasks than others. The organisation therefore needs to know the quality of the work employees deliver. That is a legitimate need.
The fact that an organisation wants to know this/has this need means you can quickly fall into an evaluation trap. You go straight to how people have performed their tasks, instead of asking whether they have the opportunity to achieve them. Is the most important thing about an employee appraisal, then, to find out who is performing well and who is performing poorly – or is it to develop each person based on their abilities? To gain insight into and thereby facilitate a work situation where the individual masters their tasks, in line with the organisation's goals and values?
Performance evaluations have been carried out for many years. Their aim is to obtain an accurate ranking of individual performance in the workplace. They were used as early as the 19th century, when the first ranking methods were flawed and often left to the individual rater to interpret (Pulakos, Mueller-Hanson & Arad; 2018). With the rise of assembly-line management came an increased focus on productivity, with a corresponding use of rankings to control and drive increased performance in the workplace.
However, there are a number of challenges with such evaluations, including how to define the value of the work of a single role. Organisations spend a lot of resources and time carrying out such evaluations. Checklists are drawn up to assess employees and thereby “ensure” that their value as employees has been assessed. This has often been reserved for the annual employee appraisal.
Despite these attempts, no one has managed to come up with a rating system that can reliably distinguish which organisations are blessed with a deep bench of high-performing employees and which are full of mediocrity (Woolston, 2019). How valid are the data and methods used for evaluation?
Furthermore, there has been a development and focus on workers' rights and how their work is organised. This in turn has led to research into whether evaluations work as intended. The practice of evaluations has been researched extensively, and the overall findings are that it does not lead to improvements in employees' performance or give the organisation a competitive advantage. It is expensive to carry out and has little to no effect on productivity (Pulakos et al., 2018).
Of all the methods used to rank and evaluate employees, the annual evaluation meeting is particularly unhelpful, and in some cases harmful.
These evaluation meetings create artificial steps and a box-ticking exercise. Even employees who perform well and at a high level become defensive when faced with these conversations. The conversation, which is supposed to be productive, becomes a “fight or flight” situation.
The employee goes into the conversation with an evaluation of their own work, and the manager goes in with their assessment of the employee. This quickly creates a situation where the employee goes into the conversation to defend themselves, not to develop in consultation with a well-meaning manager who wants to bring out the best in them. Evaluations can be a breeding ground for conflict if they are used incorrectly.
Many researchers studying this type of evaluation encourage organisations to think differently. Even so, the use of such annual evaluation meetings still appears to be a very widespread practice (Woolston, 2019).
When assessing employees and giving feedback, it should be done in a simpler way, ideally as close to the event/activity as possible. Continuous dialogue with frequent feedback is the way to go, rather than an annual evaluation where employees feel they have to defend their performance, effort and value as employees.
As an employee, you have to be able to handle being assessed, but a better starting point must be found than collecting the assessments once a year. Have a basic attitude that the employee has great value in themselves, and that you as an organisation are looking to facilitate the whole work situation. This builds relationships and ensures everyone pulls in the same direction. This is good leadership.
So, rather than having a terrible starting point for an employee appraisal, managers should use it to put the employee in the driving seat. Give the employee more authority and responsibility for their own work situation. Use the time to listen and find out whether the work situation is sufficiently well arranged. Is anything preventing you from solving your tasks? How is your motivation? What expectations do you have of your work situation? How do you feel your work situation is being looked after?
Don't use the employee appraisal as an arena for evaluating the employee. Use it instead as an arena for building the relationship between manager and employee, and from there develop everyone involved.
