When times get busy, it can be easy to let some of your people processes fall away as you concentrate on your business.
Take the performance review. They can be unpopular, sucking up a lot of time and making employees and managers stressed. So why not skip them?
Because good performance reviews work, when they are done well. They’re an effective way to track people’s progress, provide feedback, gain insight, support development, and align individual performance with your business goals, which helps the business achieve results.
So how do you do them well? Here are some tips for getting the most out of your performance reviews:
- Target the right people - Not everyone has to have full, formal reviews. Prioritise the positions that have a genuine opportunity to deliver over-and-above results. This could be one of your workers on the tools or a team leader.
- Focus on the conversation - documentation provides a basic way to articulate expectations, track performance, and measure results, but it shouldn’t replace honest, 2-way communication with your people. Start with a little chit chat and remember to REALLY listen to the answers.
- Keep it simple - structure the review around the objectives needed for success in the role, the skills needed to achieve the objectives, and a development plan that aims to improve skills, reach goals, and help with career development.
- Get the review cycle right - align full-scope reviews to an annual cycle and schedule regular check-ins at meaningful times throughout the year.
- Use software - Good software will help lighten the admin load and make it easier to chart and really analyse employee performance.
Ensuring your staff understand the strategic objectives and helping them meet their KPIs can lead to more engagement and a happier workforce.
This post was originally written by BOMA and has been updated to make it more personal.
