In my very first performance review my manger called me in to his office with almost no forewarning and wanted to discuss my performance. He handed me a piece of paper and began to talk about my great work, then he turned to a single area of improvement and continued to discuss that single area of improvement for the rest of the hour. When I left his office, he was thinking that I was a great employee and that I would be able to help grow the department. I left thinking that I was about to get fired! Let’s just say there was a bit of a gap in the communication and this was not a successful performance review.
I hope that none of you have ever had an experience like mine; however reviews like this are a lot more common than you would think. Performance reviews, make or break company culture and how employees feel about their abilities. That is why it is so important to make sure that your reviews and your review process are not causing more damage than their potential benefit.
Communicate Expectations: The first step to a successful employee review is to communicate your expectations to each employee on your team before they even do their work. This is often where job descriptions come in, which by the way, should be shared with employees on their first day of employment if not earlier. Job descriptions outline what an employee is supposed to be doing in order to be considered successful. However, communication and expectations cannot just be part of a list. Your expectations as a manger need to be communicated verbally to each individual on your team on a regular basis. Sometimes, this takes the form of a one on one meeting scheduled on a weekly or monthly basis. Sometimes, this is an ongoing relationship over lunch or everyday work activities. Managers should strive to share expectations in a formal setting, usually a quarterly or annual review, as well as in an informal setting, typically in the form of high five, or thank you via email.
Tell the Whole Story: When formal reviews are given, it is very important that the opinion of both the supervisor and the employee are represented. Most commonly, employees are given a form of some kind and asked to rate themselves and give examples of their performance. Managers are given a similar form and asked to rate that employee. Then, ideally, the manager and the employee sit down together to discuss what was communicated in their documentation. This process gives the manager and the employee time to plan out what needs to be discussed. Moreover, it gives both parties time to visualize how to address those challenging topics that often come up in a performance review. It is never ideal for either party to be caught off guard about topics that need to be brought up in a review.
Try Really Hard to Avoid Biases: The number one bias that managers face when giving a formal review is recency bias! Unfortunately, it is very common for us as humans to remember recent events over other events. This has a very unfortunate effect performance reviews. Imagine that you are an all-star employee, and you just met the highest sales goal the company has ever seen in a first quarter period. Then at the end of the second quarter you loose a ton of new clients, and your manger begins to get worried about your performance. Well guess what happens at the end of second quarter? Yeah, you guessed it, performance reviews. So in your review your manager only talks about your second quarter performance because they have forgotten about your first quarter performance. How would that feel?
Well this is the perfect example of the recency bias. In order to combat this bias, we first ask all managers to be aware of the bias and how it can impact the over all moral of a team. Secondly, if this is a bias you think you may have fallen prey to, then please keep notes about your employee’s performance throughout the entire review period. These notes will allow you as a manger to accurately review all of your employees on their accomplishments and growth areas. These two steps will help you fight the recency bias.
These are just a few things you can do as a manager to better your review processes. At hr-haven, we work with all kinds of companies to create review processes that fit their company and culture perfectly. If you think that you or your mangers may need to update your process or simply need training to improve your process effectiveness, please feel free to call us anytime 913.940.5391!