Employee Performance Reviews: What You Should Know
Most businesses will conduct annual performance reviews with their employees. If organisations aren’t doing this, they will likely have more unhappy employees and potentially more employees leaving the business.
An employee review is all about talking to your employee to find out how they’ve been getting on within the business, and what they can do to improve. It will also be for you to find out what you can do to improve the business.
We’ve put together this article to go over everything you need to know about employee performance reviews. Read on to get started.
Do Them Often
Commonly, a manager may set up an annual performance review with employees, but you should think bigger. Consider branching beyond annual reviews, so that you can work with more tangible targets and deal with relevancy when it happens.
How many you conduct will depend largely on the size of your organisation, and how many employees you have underneath you. Some organisations may only have time for reviews every six months, and some may be able to have one each month. A monthly review doesn’t have to be the most in-depth review ever, it just needs to be able to cover what you need to cover.
Consider asking your team how often they would prefer a review. You may find it different for everyone, and you may be surprised with how much they want to go over their job. If you want to get more honest answers, consider conducting an anonymous survey, so employees can say what they really think without worry or anxiety.
Ensure You Listen
Performance reviews aren’t just about you informing your employees how they have been doing and what they need to be doing. These reviews should be two-way conversations so that you and the employees can engage more.
Both the manager and the employee should contribute to the conversation equally to get through as much as possible. Of course, as a manager, you should know when to listen when your employee is saying something so that you can act on it. If you aren’t truly listening during an employee review, then this will be wasted time, and no one will get anything from it.
Personalise Them
You will find that you will have more fortune with employee performance reviews if you personalise them. You shouldn’t ask your employees the same questions, especially if they aren’t relevant to them personally. Consider the individual employee, and what you could ask them in order to get an idea of where they are at with their career.
You should consider using software in order to effectively get a hold of your performance data, so that you can use the data to get a good idea of how employees are performing. This will put you in good stead for a performance review, as you have actual information that you can use.
We recommend looking into the performance management system from Factorial HR, as this will allow you to gain more insight into your workforce.
You can personalise every aspect of your employee performance review with suggested review questions and archive your previous questions using this expert software. This will allow you to follow up on what you’ve said in reviews and action them. You can use sign up to a free trial of this software from Factorial to find out for yourself how they could improve your employee performance reviews.
Focus On The Future
When conducting an employee performance review, you should ensure you are focusing on the future and the past. A lot of employers may use performance reviews to look at how they’ve done previously, over the last year or so, to find out what they’ve done well and what didn’t.
However, an employee cannot change what happened in the past, and while it will be good to go over it briefly, you should use this time to look ahead. The main focus of your performance review with an employee should be to give them something to work towards, such as setting a target that will see them improve their work ethic and productivity.
Use Them To Motivate
Performance reviews shouldn’t be solely used in order to work with an employee to go over what they’ve done, and what they’re going to do, you should also use them to motivate. Employees may be lacking in productivity and output, due to a lack of motivation.
Therefore, consider trying to motivate your staff during a performance review. You could find out what will motivate them in this review, such as finding out what they want from their job, and what will enhance their experience.
Remember that this time belongs to your employee, and it will be their time to talk openly about their experiences. You may find out that something that just isn’t really working for one reason or another that you will need to change to improve productivity and increase overall motivation.
