In simple words, employees move a company forward, and they are key. So, their performance affects business results, either for good or bad.
In times of The Great Resignation, companies have to find ways to keep employees high performing as it helps in hiring, retaining, and developing their best talents. As a result, they can build the pipeline of future leaders.
Not only planning and evaluating but reviewing employee's performance is a necessary and an ongoing process, a crucial step toward the company's goals. How to conduct employees' performance reviews is essential.
We have asked specialists worldwide about their best practice when conducting employees' performance reviews. Here are 13 best practices for conducting employee performance reviews:
- Prepare Employees in Advance
- Provide Clear Feedback To Avoid Confusion
- Avoid Unnecessary Questions
- Establish Clear Goals for The Future
- Treat Employees as Individuals
- Establish a Sense of Authority
- Let Your Employees Review Themselves
- Use Tangible Workplace Benchmarks
- Allow Employees To Review You To Set The Tone
- Ensure The Review is a Positive Experience
- Give Employees More Autonomy
- Avoid Conflating Performance Reviews With Pay Raises
- Document All Feedback
Prepare Employees in Advance
Preparing your employees for their performance reviews is a compassionate and more productive way to ensure that both parties walk away with actionable feedback.
As a rule of thumb, an employee should never get feedback in a way that is unexpected, out of the blue or hasn't had any previous discussion. In other words, there should be no surprises. Only discuss things that have already been brought up, especially if they are negative or constructive in nature.
If you surprise an employee with negative feedback when they believe they have been performing well, their morale can be crushed. They stop trusting their instincts and perception of their work and stop trusting you as their leader. That is not (hopefully) the desired outcome of a performance review and must be avoided at all costs.
Gates Little, altLINE Sobanco
Provide Clear Feedback To Avoid Confusion
Throughout my career, I have had employees confused about their performance review when told they need to improve on non-quantifiable (and not easily identifiable) areas - such as "You need to improve your attitude." My advice is to ask -"I am surprised by that feedback because I cannot think of a situation where my attitude has been a concern. Would you mind sharing with me examples of something I have done/said that has led to that perception?"
Managers should be prepared to provide examples, clear feedback, and expectations to avoid confusion or even resentment on the part of the employee. My suggestion is to write down the incidents that back up, in this case, what constituted a "bad attitude," as oftentimes the issue may be a performance or behavior issue that framed correctly, would be much more valuable than the elusive definition of attitude.
PATTY HICKOK, NANA Regional Corporation
Avoid The Unnecessary Questions
To make a successful employee performance review, both the employee and reviewer should prepare the necessary documents, including a copy of the employee's personnel, previous notes, goals, and remarks from a supervisor, coworker, or team leader. This will help both the employee and the reviewer to compare the performance.
The reviewers should speak carefully and should only ask the right questions. All the unnecessary questions should be avoided during the review. This makes an employee comfortable, and he will get motivated for the next.
The reviewer should listen as much as he speaks so that the employee can explain to him. The reviewer should give some good examples if the employee needs to improve something.
Track the employee's progress so that the employee understands that his effort made a difference. And at the end of the session, the reviewer should set the next goal and take the necessary notes.
Steven Walker, Spylix
Fiona Lewis, Co-Founder at Notta adds that when it comes to conducting employees' performance reviews, the best practice is to be clear, concise, and objective. Be sure to review both the positive and negative aspects of each employee's performance. It is also important to give specific examples to back up your claims. Finally, be sure to set realistic goals for employees to strive for in the future.
Establish Clear Goals for The Future
Make sure that you establish clear goals for your employees to pursue based upon all that has been discussed in their performance reviews. Doing so will ensure that you and your employees are on the same page as to what specifically they need to work towards going forward. Furthermore, your employees will feel motivated to work on these goals knowing that you will likely bring them up again to go over your progress during future performance reviews.
Miles Beckett, Flossy
Treat Employees as Individuals
You will have targets and expectations for the team as a group, but it's important to consider the employees as individuals within the group. Each of us has differing skill sets and knowledge gaps, so the performance review can't be classed as one size fits all. Look to conduct the review based on the employee's experience and qualifications, not as an average of the team's performance. By all means, compile a checklist of points to be reviewed, but allow for the fact that we are all at different stages of our development and make allowances for areas to improve on. Never share any employee's review with the team. This could severely dent confidence if it is not as good as they hoped it would be. Instead, keep the results confidential and only share the overall team performance stats.
Jonathan Zacks, GoReminders
Establish a Sense of Authority
While it is advisable to have a casual conversation when performing a performance review, leaders should always establish authority. Through this, your employees will see the importance and urgency of your words, letting them take your feedback seriously. It also allows you to be more effective in enforcing steps that will help improve your employees' performance.
On the other hand, employees may take your comments lightly if you fail to demonstrate enough authority. They might think you are just doing a performance review for compliance. Worse, they will not follow the action plan given and will not exert effort to hone themselves to get better results the next time around.
Allan Stolc, Bankly.dk
Let Your Employees Review Themselves
Annual performance reviews are supposed to be a way to improve employee performance. But research shows that more than one-third of employees who get a bad review say it hurts their performance. Bad reviews can reduce the quality of your employees' work and make them feel resentful of management. Here is a simple trick to ensure that your employees receive positive reviews and are happy to receive them: give your employees a choice in their review. Let your employees review themselves and submit this to you for your review. This gives them an opportunity to reflect on their performance and improve on it.
Neille Bonner, NEC
Use Tangible Workplace Benchmarks
A performance review is as helpful to the employee as it is to the employer. On the one hand, these reviews give the employer an insight into how an employee is performing on the job and how these contributions can be rewarded. On the other hand, it is also an opportunity for the employee to get into the details of all that they are accomplishing and the areas they are falling short in. However, these advantages can be achieved only when the employer measures employee performance against actual work and workplace benchmarks. This also makes it easier for the employee to understand their shortfalls.
Mary Jurgensen, Gary and Mary West PACE
Allow Employees To Review You To Set The Tone
Ask your employees for their feedback. When I'm conducting employees' performance reviews, I always want to get their input on how I'm doing. Employees' thoughts and views can give me the critical feedback I need to adjust and provide them with everything they require to do their job more effectively. The best way to make sure your employees are performing at their highest level is to make sure that you are performing at your highest level, and the best way to find that out is to ask your employees.
Tony Staehelin, Benable
Ensure The Review is a Positive Experience
Every employee wants to perform well and be rewarded for it. Getting it right in the first review is therefore essential for the relationship between employer and employee to develop. To make it a success, every single employee needs to know what's expected of them and how they can improve. Plus, the employer should take steps to ensure the review is a positive experience for both. When conducting employees' performance reviews, be clear about the expectations for the employees and come prepared with specific examples of where and when you have seen the employee performing above, at, and below expectations. Don't forget to praise good performance, and allow the employee to ask any questions that he/she may have. Remember, the purpose of an employee performance review is to help your employee succeed and to have him/her continue providing superior performance.
Tomoko Harris, WinnerWinner
Give Employees More Autonomy
It's important to be present and give guidance to your team when they need it, but you must strike a balance between lighting the path and pressuring employees to take it. As a manager, you won't always be around to monitor your team's performance — especially in a remote setting. For this reason, it's best to give employees more independence as they evaluate their performance and set attainable goals.
Rather than telling employees exactly what to do next, offer gentle guidance and allow them to reach those same conclusions independently. This allows employees to be truly honest with themselves about where they could improve, which bolsters their motivation and keeps them focused on new challenges that they've chosen. As a result of this positive cycle, employees will be more likely to incorporate routine self-improvement as part of their workflow. This encourages them to improve autonomously in the future, giving you more of a supporting role in management.
Max Wesman, GoodHire
Avoid Conflating Performance Reviews With Pay Raises
Do not conflate performance reviews with pay raises. Bad incentives can be created when employees see that their opportunity for financial gain is tied to feedback regarding their review. Performance reviews are intended to provide an honest assessment of an employee's production and work quality. Directly mixing discussions of compensation with performance can distort this honest assessment. Performance and pay raises are already major conversations that do not need to be combined as this ultimately presents an unproductive, complex dynamic for managers.
Sean Doherty, Box Genie
Document All Feedback
Provide frequent feedback to your employees and document that feedback, either in a follow-up email to the employee that's copied to yourself or simply to yourself. Move the documentation email into a folder for items regarding that employee. When it's time to write the performance review, it's easy to locate everything you need to write the review, and the employee has been kept informed, so there should be no surprises for them in their performance review.
Mindi Ferguson, Freelance
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