A performances review is the key to deciding bonuses, raises, and promotions, which happen at least once in every business. Performance reviews are formal assessments of employees when they are assessed on their work performance. Based on how their weaknesses and strengths are identified. The future tasks are assigned accordingly. The system to review employee performance is necessary for any company or business to keep the overall productivity quotient high.
Performance reviews are two-way individualized conversations between employees and supervisors about their performance, improvement areas, growth, and development as they relate to the employee and the company. Selecting a performance review plan for the business is a crucial step.
In this article, we will discuss ways to review employee performance effectively. You can also check out our article on 12 tips to improve your technical hiring strategy.
Why Are Performance Reviews Important?
Performance review is a foundation method to leverage talent, understand improvement areas, and connect with the employees. For employees, performance reviews can help employees to improve their skills and knowledge about the company’s expectations better. Through rating, employee performance managers can identify high-performing employees and encourage the growth and development of the company.
How To Review Employee Performance
Here we listed mainly six point that you should consider.
1. Set specific goals
For driving employee performance, increasing focus, and structuring priorities setting specific goals is necessary. These goals should be in resonance with employees’ strengths and weaknesses. By establishing the performance standards, multiple employees in a similar position are evaluated. But, goals and objectives are set specifically for the employee. The right set of goals can help employees improve their skills and learn new ones if required. One should set goals individually for the employees, considering their skills and relevance to their position.
2. Brush Up On Your Employee Experience Data
Managers should take regular notes throughout the year on every employee individually. They should create individual files for every employee. Take notes throughout the year about their performance, shortcomings, or accomplishments. The file should contain all the positive and negative observations about the employee. Before the performance review meeting, always take a look at the file to brush up on the employee experience data to give constructive feedback on their performance.
3.Evaluate the Performance, Not the Personality
While evaluating an employee’s performance, instead of focusing on their personality traits, focus on their professional behavior. Pointing out negative personality traits while rating employee’s performance may sound offensive to the employee. Instead, try approaching them with constructive criticism on their professional behavior. While evaluating the employee performance, you can consider the following factors for efficient evaluation:
Percentage of tasks completed on time
Calculate a round percentage of tasks completed on time. This percentage will show employees’ time management skills and competency for specific tasks.
Amount of consistent improvement
Study the improvement graph of the employee throughout the year. You can also see if they have upskilled and improved since the last performance review meeting.
Level of execution
From your year-round notes, see if the employee has taken the criticism well and execute in their behavior. Their behavioural traits and the level of execution of the tasks show their acceptance of criticism.
Quality of work
On the one hand, timely completion is vital, whereas, on the other hand, quality of work should also contribute to the company’s productivity. In addition to judging the timely completion of the assigned tasks, you can also review the quality of the work done by the employee.
4. Ask Specific Questions
To rate employee performance efficiently, you can ask specific questions during the review meeting to listen to the employee’s part of the story. The review based on only numbers might not be effective. Hence, include questions related to their worldview in their performance. These may include their yearly goals, challenges they faced, the support they require from the company, feedbacks about your managerial skills, their long-term career goals, etc
5. Alternative ways to collect feedback
Feedbacks should not be once in a year activity and should go on for a whole year to keep up with the employees and motivate them to achieve their yearly goals. The procedure to evaluate an employee’s performance is also necessary to collect and give feedback from the employees. Some of the alternative ways to collect feedback include:
360° feedback
The 360-degree feedback system includes feedback not only from the managers but also, from coworkers and juniors. This ensures all-around feedback systems to evaluate opportunities for improvement and growth.
Continual feedback
Another way companies cut costs is by avoiding formal structured performance reviews in favour of sharing feedback regularly. But sometimes without formal checkpoints employees are unable to judge their growth patterns.
Employee pulse reviews
It is a mid-way between continual feedback and the yearly performance review systems. It is conducted more frequently at a stipulated time, like monthly, quarterly, etc. These mainly constitute employee engagement surveys, but they work similarly to feedback systems.
6. Ask them to rate themselves
This method is an interactive and effective approach for rating employee performance. Getting feedback in front of a supervisor can be a daunting process for the employee. Filling out questionnaires based on the rating scale is a rather easy and effective way to collect reviews.
How To Choose An Employee Rating Scale?
There are many types of performance rating scales for employees. The managers should select the employee rating scale in resonance with the scope, demands, and size of the company. The most commonly used efficient performance rating scale includes:
1. Numerical Rating Scale (1-5)
It is the most popular method of performance review. The managers assign a level to each point on a scale from 1-5. The employees are given ratings out of 5. Employees in the same department and at similar positions can also be rated using the rating scale to identify the better-performing employee.
2. Likert Scale
Likert scale also has a five-point scale. But, it has an equal number of positive and negative outcomes with a neutral option in the middle.
3. Custom Scale
These scales are built by managers and customized according to the needs of the company. This scale may include a 10 point scale with descriptive measures at different levels.
Performance Review Pitfalls To Avoid
No system of feedbacks
Feedbacks are a necessary element of any organization. If you don’t have a feedback system built at your company, invest timein establishing it.
Lack of communication
We all know the effects of miscommunication and lack of communication in an organization. Build effective communication channels at different stages of the organization to increase growth and communicate ideas better.
Untrained Managers
Performance review is not effective till the managers are incompetent for efficient assessment. Regular training programmes and workshops should be organized for better performance review systems.
Conclusion
The annual performance review activity is a key part to ensure the overall growth and development of any business. To prepare a performance review for an employee, managers need to have an effective method. They are a basic and most effective way to identify improvement areas, shortcomings, and better-performing employees. The rating scale should be in resonance with the company’s demands. An effective performance review system in the company results in better productivity of employees and the overall company.
