Whether youâre a manager or one of your organizationâs sterling HR representatives, youâre probably more anxious about the annual employee performance review process than your employees are. In fact, managers spend 210 hours a year on performance review process best practices.Â
What many managers sometimes fail to realize is that the employee review process doesnât have to be the stereotypical typified, stale, and potentially awkward (or difficult) conversation that it has typically been. Weâve created an actionable list of the best practices so that both you and your direct reports can maximize the time spent on reviews and better manage and motivate your talent.
Benefits of employee reviews
Employee reviews are more than just a once-a-year meeting to go over an individual's performance. There are advantages to these annual reviews that will impact your team members long after the meeting is over:Â
- Improved communicationÂ
- Employee engagementÂ
- Professional developmentÂ
- Skills growth
Steps in the employee review processÂ
1. Determine which type of performance review process your company should use
Management should create a safe space for direct reports to have conversations with managersâas opposed to an authority-driven space where a manager just tells each employee where theyâre failing and why. Businesses should get into the habit of coaching their direct reports instead of disciplining them, and they might also want to think about implementing a management feedback system to balance the scales and better facilitate feedback between employees and managers.Â
Letâs look at the different review processes you can do to achieve this.
Types of employee review processes
Top-down
This approach is typically what you would envision for a standard employee performance review. A top-down review involves a supervisor formally meeting with the supervisee to discuss mistakes and insights and provide constructive feedback.
The goal is to open communication between employees and supervisors to review past performance and plan for future professional development. But a major critique of the top-down approach is that it can cause employees anxiety and hinder open communication because it is centered around an unbalanced relationship between managers and employees.Â
Self-evaluation
Just as the name suggests, self-evaluations involve employees reviewing their performance both with qualitative and quantitative measurements. This approach grants employees more ownership in the process, giving them the opportunity to reflect on their work and providing managers with valuable insights from the employee's perspective.Â
However, self-assessments often lack objectivity and skew the employee perspective, which can easily lead to conflict and employee resentment. Â
360-degree
Also known as the multi-rater feedback or multi-source feedback, the 360-degree approach aims to provide a comprehensive employee assessment. It incorporates feedback from numerous parties, including peers, direct reports, non-direct supervisors, and even the employees themselves. While the 360-degree feedback process offers more robust and constructive feedback, it can also overwhelm employees and require more time to process all of the information.Â
Ratings
A performance rating evaluation uses a scale or grading system usually customized for your organization to measure employee's performance. A key benefit of a performance evaluation rating scale is that it provides quantifiable data and can easily show trends over time. However, most rating systems often lack nuance and tend to skew nice rather than accurate. Â
Mix and match
Combine any of the review processes listed above to find the best employee performance review system for your organization.
2. Map out your employee review process
Once youâve determined the performance review process for your organization, the next step is to map the entire process to get everyone on the same page.Â
The complexity of your process will depend largely on the method you chose above. A rating system is much more straightforward than using the 360-degree feedback, which requires you to bring together multiple parties.
Typically building out the process starts with HR determining the timeline and steps needed to execute a successful employee performance evaluation. Be sure to consider the following when you start mapping out your own employee review process:
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Training: Determine whether employees need to be trained on the process, especially if it is new to the organization.
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Time: Consider how long will employees and managers need to complete the assessment.Â
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Feedback and action: Include when employees will receive feedback and the timeline for any action that needs to be taken as a result of the evaluation (e.g., promotions, pay increases).
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Participants: Decide how many individuals are involved. Is it simply the manager and employee or does the process include multiple evaluators like in the 360-degree feedback method?
