Making The Most of Your Employee Reviews
In many organizations, employee reviews are seen as a box-ticking exercise or a dreaded chore. Neither approach takes into account how valuable these debriefings can be for your team, your company and, ultimately, your clients.
Think of them as the cornerstone of your internal communications, a chance for employees and their managers to air their concerns and reflect on where they can improve performance. Done well, an employee review leaves both parties engaged, motivated, and eager to build on their success. But without guidance on what an effective and comprehensive review looks like, managers may struggle with how to approach these conversations.
Tips for improving your performance reviews
1. Schedule employee evaluations
Regular reviews are vital, and the best way to ensure they’re not overlooked or ignored is to put them in the calendar.
Each company has their own policies around how frequently to schedule reviews, but the workforce has moved away from annual evaluations in recent years - recognizing that a lot can change in 12 months. More frequent huddles pave the way for improvement and ongoing development.
Many organizations now prefer quarterly get-togethers. This hits the sweet spot between so frequent they become annoying and time-consuming, and so infrequent that they’re rendered irrelevant.
2. Be prepared with the right tools
If managers are to critique their team’s work and provide guidance, they need to understand their contributions in a meaningful way.
Productivity monitoring tools give team leaders visibility into how employees are engaged with core business tools throughout the work day. By tracking activity in CRM platforms, documents, calls, and other applications, leaders can rely on data that paints a clear picture of productivity and engagement, all compiled in a central interface.
See at a glance what your staff are doing, what they’re not doing, and what they should be doing before diving into their evaluation so you can have an informed conversation rooted in data.
3. Be honest, but not adversarial
Giving positive feedback is easy, but effective managers know how to deliver the bad news as well as the good.
Studies show that bosses who practice ‘radical candor’ get better responses when being critical. This type of proactive, compassionate approach puts the person first - encouraging managers to see employees as people, rather than just workers.
Treat your team with respect during their evaluation and they’re much more likely to take your feedback onboard. And, if there is bad news, be sure to offer achievable solutions so your employee leaves your office knowing exactly what they can do to improve.
4. Make it a consistent conversation
If employees are having issues, managers shouldn’t wait for a scheduled review to address them. This may very well be the most important tip.
Feedback doesn’t always have to be formal, but it should be consistent. With regular, informal, check-ins everyone knows where they stand and minor issues can be addressed before they become major crises.
Prodoscore can help managers gauge an employee’s performance in real-time, acting as a daily indicator of employee engagement. The invaluable data collected by the platform helps you decide when it’s time for a conversation outside of the formal review process, acting as an office version of your vehicle’s ‘check engine’ light.
You can even view and filter data over any timeframe to see how your employee’s productivity has changed since their last review, keeping them accountable for any previous commitments.
You don’t have to rely on scribbled notes or half-remembered meetings, there’s no digging through emails or reports - the Prodoscore dashboard has all the data you need for effective employee evaluations right at your fingertips. Contact us today to schedule a demonstration.
