Tips for Effective Performance Reviews
Are you comfortable giving feedback to your employees? My experience has been that managers are not skilled at giving effective feedback to their staff.
I’ve been in the same situation…not sure how to share my evaluation in a way that keeps them motivated…and still set the stage for change. It’s easy when the employee is a star performer, but what about the “average” or “under performing” employee. How do you provide feedback that offers solutions to their growth as well as meet the department’s requirements.
An employee who is “underperforming” may be new to the job or responsibility. A new employee will expect to be evaluated lower as they are still in the learning stage.
A more seasoned employee who is not performing because of lack of skill set or inappropriate behaviors need to be dealt with immediately and don’t wait until the performance review process. Performance reviews work best as recognition of person’s past contributions, tweaking of performance levels, and a discussion of future goals for the upcoming year.
Every action a manager takes with an employee either motivates or de-motivates the employee. Performance Reviews have the potential to add value to your working relationship or irritate it…it all depends on how skilled you are in this function of your role.
You company probably has training in place to help you through the performance review process. Instead of waiting until the last hour to complete your employee’s reviews, start early and see if you can find a HR partner to help you through the process.
Even if you are a seasoned manager, you still have the opportunity to learn more because business and employee’s needs change, and why not make your job easier by learning how to best motivate your employees.
Here are some tips to guide you when you are evaluating your employees:
- Create a list of “strengths” and “needs improvement” for each employee.
- Keep your feedback simple, clear and specific.
- Your performance review form usually has a list of attributes that support the company’s culture…use them to evaluate behavior. Add your skill and knowledge requirements for each role and match the employee’s level of expertise.
- Yes, you usually have to put a “number” on the person’s performance evaluation. If you choose “satisfactory” or “3” as your evaluation, indicate specifically what they are doing to meet the job requirements. This is a perfect opportunity to affirm “good” performance. Take the time to give specific examples.
- Start your review with their strengths…and ask them for their input regarding your comments. If you want to motivate an employee, you have to play to their strengths. I suggest that you spend more time with the strengths portion of the review process than with the “needs improvement”
- When you discuss what “needs to improve,” give specific examples of appropriate performance levels or behaviors that you want from them.
- Don’t overload the employee with lots of little things they have to improve on… rather focus on those key skills or attributes that add the most value to them and to your department. Make choices on what’s important.
- Finally, listen to what the employee’s feedback is…maybe you weren’t that explicit around your expectations. I’ve been surprised myself in the past when a person who reported to me shared I wasn’t particularly clear with a project…and when I reflected I realized she was correct. It’s a learning experience for everyone.
Note: If you want to make the performance process really easy…start a document on each of your employees and add notes throughout the year on their performance. It’s probably best to do it immediately when you are aware of their performance…or at least once-a-week capture notes around their work.
When I coach individuals, I tell them to start their own log and capture all of their performance points. A whole year is hard to remember what you do. We tend to remember the most recent or most significant.
Next Topic
Goal Setting
Pat
Other Topics:
3 Different Types of Employee Goals
How To Create Employee Goals
That Time of The Year…Again…Performance Reviews
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