If you Google “hate performance reviews,” you’re met with more than 86 million results. Wow! It seems that employees really hate the ways their organizations monitor and evaluate performance. However, this doesn’t have to be a painful process for managers or employees. In fact, it should be something that helps grow and develop your talent within the organization.
Performance reviews were created eons ago to do three things: to provide a forcing function for managers to have a substantive conversation with their employees about their performance over the previous year, to correct any performance issues or highlight areas for improvement, and to create documentation of the employee’s performance. While these three reasons still exist, many organizations aren’t using performance reviews in a way that actually helps grow and develop an employee. One of the biggest complaints from employees is that the performance review is just an exercise in futility and has no impact on growth, compensation, or any other type of recognition and rewards program in the organization.
So, what can your organization do to correct the performance review situation? Here are three simple steps:
1. Focus on goals. Rating scales often don’t help with changing behavior and have little meaning to the employee. Instead, think about what you want the employee to achieve in the next period of performance. This should be an interactive process with input and feedback from both the employee and manager.
2. Think about career development and retention. Employees want to know if they have a future with your organization. This has increasingly become a demand from the younger workforce. Those who don’t see a clear career path will leave for an opportunity with an organization that affords them one.
3. Make this an ongoing process, not just once a year. Employees want regular feedback and hearing from their managers only one time per year isn’t changing any behavior—good or bad. Consider holding regular meetings on a weekly or monthly basis to check on progress toward goals. These meetings may be less structured and shorter, but afford the employee an opportunity to check in with the manager and get timely and regular feedback.
Interested in learning more about better performance reviews? Please join us for a webcast on July 13 from 1-2 p.m. ET. Registration and details are available here.
