Productive Performance Reviews

Research shows that regular, effective performance reviews increase the likelihood that an employee will be satisfied with their manager and will be more productive on the job. And, while many factors contribute to employee retention, dissatisfaction with managers and lack of performance reviews are often cited as reasons employees leave an organization. Effective, helpful appraisals certainly affect the bottom line.

Why performance reviews

Beyond the potential cost of poor appraisal strategies, let’s talk about some other reasons why performance reviews are important:

• Employee contributions: to the success of the organization or they wouldn’t be there. It’s important to let them know. Providing feedback that helps develop employee knowledge and skill in addition to evaluating past performance, impacts the organization.
• Communication:  If done well, performance management provides multiple ways to improve communications between managers and employees. Better communication improves morale and retention. We’re human, and people are motivated by meaningful assessment, feedback, and recognition, all of which are elements of performance management.
• Self-esteem: Good performance management helps build self-esteem which leads to greater commitment and better work relations for everyone. Wouldn’t your managers like to reap some of these benefits?

Preparation

Before you can provide guidance to your managers, evaluate the effectiveness of your performance management program, top management support, evaluation tool, policies and procedures, and training for the program. Once you have these components in place with input and involvement of your managers and employees, you’re ready to hand the baton to the managers for implementation.

Common mistakes to avoid

When you’re ready to turn the process over to your managers, here are some guidelines that can help them avoid common mistakes:

• Halo/horn effect: We can easily base too much of our review on one event whether it was good (halo) or bad (horn).
• Recency: Too often we focus on events—both positive and negative—that happened recently and forget those that happened early in the review period.
• Bias: Each of us is unique; that’s part of being human. As managers, we need to be sure our own values, beliefs, or prejudices aren’t influencing how we evaluate our employees’ performance on the job.
• Strictness/Leniency: There are two types of managers we’d be better off without. One is reluctant to give anyone a high rating. In their opinion, nobody is outstanding and since employees can always improve, this manager never gives high scores. The other type doesn’t like giving low scores to anyone. The result of either of these approaches is that everyone—great, good, or needing improvement—tends to get the same ratings (i.e., three or four) with little differentiation for performance.
• Contrast: Many times managers make the mistake of comparing one employee to another rather than simply evaluating the employee’s performance.

Helping your managers become aware of these pitfalls and to avoid them will result in more quality reviews, which will benefit managers, employees, and the organization.

Doing our homework

Another common mistake we make with performance evaluations is failing to do our homework before conducting an annual performance review. Below is a list of some things that should be done before the meeting:

• Review:
  • Review the employee’s job requirements/description. (If it’s wrong, this is the best time to update it.)
  • Review the goals you and the employee set at the beginning of the plan year. (Notice I said that you AND the employee set at the BEGINNING of the plan year.)
  • Review the employee’s past performance reviews.
• Gather info:
  • Seek input from others who interact more regularly with the employee than you do.
  • Ask the employee for a self-evaluation to be provided to you in advance.
• Identify:
  • Identify variances between your review of the employee and their self-evaluation.
  • Identify many positive and developmental examples so you don’t get stuck referring to the same situations over and over again in your review.
  • Identify career development opportunities for the employee as well as future goals.
• Create:
  • Develop questions that can be used to engage the employee in the review session making it a two-way conversation.
  • Develop an agenda to ensure all key points are covered during the session.

There’s a great deal of homework to do in advance of the actual review session. In order to give themselves enough time for the process, managers should schedule a review session a few weeks or more ahead of time. This will not only give the manager time to do this homework, but will also make the employee feel pleased that their review is important enough that the manager wanted to provide both of them with adequate time to prepare.

A positive session

The homework may end when the session begins, but there are still a number of things a manager can do to ensure the session goes smoothly:

• Location: Be sure to schedule the session in a neutral, confidential location with no opportunities for interruptions. If it has to be in the manager’s office, both the employee and manager should sit in front of the desk, not across the desk from each other.
• Non-verbals: The manager needs to pay attention to his or her non-verbal behavior. The employee is already nervous about the session, and non-verbal cues can be either threatening or comforting. For example, it’s more comforting to see open hand gestures rather than pointing. Regular eye contact shows commitment and interest. The opposite can be interpreted as no interest or hiding something.
• “I” statements: It’s important to start the conversation with something positive and to use “I” statements as often as possible. It sounds better to say “I was so impressed with the outstanding job you did on the Smith project.” rather than “You did a great job on the Smith project.”
• Listen: A manager needs to ask many open questions (e.g., what, how, describe for me) to involve the employee and to listen. Believe it or not, 60 to 70% of this meeting should be listening to the employee not the manager.
• Examples: Be sure to provide the employee with lots of examples to support the feedback being provided. This will help the employee understand both positive and developmental feedback and use it more effectively.

It’s not over till it’s over

While it may feel like the performance review session is over once the feedback has been provided, ending the session on a positive note is important.

• Looking ahead: With the manager and employee working together, setting new goals for the coming plan year places the focus on the future.
• Employee input: The employee might have some good ideas for achieving those goals, and the manager can share what he or she can do to support the employee during this plan year.
• Adequate time: The employee should have time to digest the information provided in the session before meeting later to sign the written summary. This allows the employee time to think about what was said and to talk with the manager about any remaining concerns.

Feedback more than once a year

Most of these guidelines have focused on how to prepare and conduct the annual performance review session in hopes of reducing stress for both employee and manager. Another tip for easing that anxiety is to provide feedback to employees on a regular basis. Some companies are opting for formal feedback sessions twice, even four times a year. Informal feedback is also an important part of the larger picture. For example, comments over coffee can be made after the completion of a project or a quick acknowlegement can be given when you notice something done well. Ongoing feedback, both corrective and positive, helps employees feel like they’re part of the team, solving problems and developing strategies to do their job successfully. Frequent feedback leaves no surprises for the end of the year review, which is better for everyone.

A performance management tool kit

As you probably can tell, many of these techniques and tools are common sense. But, just as with other good practices, we need a refresher now and then. Develop a tool kit for your managers that includes some of these reminders for them to review before giving performance appraisals. This will provide encouragement to use your performance management tool effectively. Remember, we’re all human which means we thirst for feedback both positive and developmental to be the best we can be.