[Dragony]

From my experience as participant in these kind of systems, this is what I think:

These systems have the goal to create buy-in from the employee to perform at a certain level. Since you create these goals yourself there are little excuses why you can't reach them. It creates an incentive for the employee to work hard all year long and lessens the burden on the company to continuously check if you're being productive.

I guess another way of saying it is: You define what you're getting paid for year over year. What value you're providing for the company.

[sideshowb]

Agree with your point on buy-in. I think these are largely a psychological tool to encourage people to take ownership of certain outcomes.

[wonderingdev]

And we need those tools for that purpose because? It's been proven that employees don't normally do that? Genuine question, looking for data here

[Dragony]

Think of it this way: It's a social contract between the company and the employee that you will spend your time on something valuable to both the company and you. In larger organisations it can also help to answer the question "What is your team working on?".

I have in fact experienced employees (peers) that will simply slack off and say they "weren't told what to do" when asked. It's infuriating to work with those kind of people. Those have been exceptions though.

[wonderingdev]

I might argue then that your company does a bad job at hiring :) Also, do you also ask yourself: what is my manager doing? I do and in good, healthy companies I can see that.

[sideshowb]

> It's been proven that employees don't normally do that?

I have no idea, but I think the psych literature (and common experience) does show that people will take stronger ownership of stuff they defined themselves in the first place (well, duh). If HR think they can get more buy-in for free then why would they not go for it.