Looking Forward To It!
How to make performance reviews less dreadful.
By Jennifer Blanchard | HRTools.com Business Writer
It’s that time of year again—performance review time.
It’s a time when employees learn what they’ve been doing well and what they need to work on for the next year. It’s a time when employers/managers get to have one-on-one conversations with employees about their performance by giving them feedback and really connecting with them.
Unfortunately, it’s also a time employers and employees, alike, dread.
But performance reviews don’t have to be dreadful. It’s all a matter of how you approach it.
Performance reviews were originally created as a way for managers and employers to give employees feedback on the work they do.
But somewhere along the line, performance reviews became something dreaded by employers and, especially, by employees.
Loving the Performance Review
One reason why performance reviews are dreaded is because employers/managers don’t like to tell employees what they’re doing wrong for fear of confrontation. And employees don’t like to hear negative things about their work.
But this is really only the case if you approach performance reviews in a negative manner.
If, however, you approach performance reviews as a positive, continual improvement process, the shift in attitude will be tremendous.
The following tips will help put that positive, continual improvement process in place for you and your employees:
- Manage performance throughout the year, not just during performance review time—This is extremely important. If you want performance reviews to be meaningful and valuable, you need to look at performance improvement as a year-long process, not just a once-a-year occurrence.
Address poor performance as soon as it becomes a problem, and, of course, recognize your employees when they’ve done a great job.
- Make performance improvement as important to employees as it is to you—As mentioned above, employees don’t want to hear all negative things about their work. But, on the other hand, employees are open to receiving constructive criticism—the kind that will actually help them improve their performance and do an even better job.
If you’re going to be reviewing your employees’ performance, you need to know and understand what constructive criticism is—what it looks like, what it doesn’t look like and how to give it correctly. Employees want—and need—this kind of feedback. So give it to them.
- Communicate with your employees regularly—When you only conduct performance evaluations once a year, it can be very stressful for both you and the employee. It may be stressful for you because you are worried about confrontations with employees who have been performing poorly. And it might be stressful for an employee because the employee may feel blind-sided by the fact that his/her performance is poor.
Especially if this is the first time he/s he is hearing about it.
By communicating regularly with your employees about their performance, however, this automatically takes away the negativity and allows you to help employees improve performance immediately and keep them from being caught off-guard during their annual performance reviews.
- Learn how to conduct an effective performance review—Many managers and employers refuse to ask for help on how to conduct performance reviews because they believe that—as a manager/employer—they should already know how to conduct one.
This is just not the case. Managers/employers weren’t born knowing how to appraise someone’s performance. So unless you somehow received, via osmosis or ESP, instructions on how to conduct a performance review, there’s no reason to feel like you “should” already know how to do it.
By getting trained on how to conduct an effective performance review—reading a book, taking a course, asking a senior manager for advice—you’ll be able to develop the skills and confidence you need to help improve your employees’ performance.
The fact of the matter is: Employees NEED performance reviews. They need to know when they are doing something right, when they are doing something wrong and get advice on how to improve. Stagnation is no way for an employee to expand his/her career.
And not giving effective performance reviews is no way for you to become a better manager.
So help yourself—and your employees—by following the above-mentioned tips, and checking out the following resources for additional help:
<p>It’s that time of year again—performance review time. It’s a time when employees learn what they’ve been doing well and what they need to work on for the next year.</p>