The DOs and DON'Ts of Performance Reviews

Jan 07, 2020

Past BJ Gallagher

Is there anyone in the workplace who has not undergone the torture of a performance review done desperately? I'm sure we have all had to endure the torment of a well-intentioned merely desperately-executed performance appraisement—in which we felt as if we were the ones being executed! Blindfold, anyone? Got any last words before the exact assault begins? I don't even smoke but I'm tempted to enquire for a final cigarette!

Most performance review systems in near organizations are so poorly designed and conducted that they actually practice more harm than adept. I often tell my clients that they would be ameliorate off doing zippo rather than doing what they're currently doing! I'm not kidding.

Hither are 10 mutual mistakes managers brand, and tips for fugitive them. These are practical activity steps you tin have to blueprint and implement a system that volition do what you want it to do—improve functioning!

Mistake: The performance review is a one-manner, top-down procedure in which the boss serves as guess and jury of employees' behavior and achievements on the job.
Solution: Make it a 2-fashion process, at the very least. (If yous actually want an constructive review arrangement, blueprint a 360-degree system that involves peer reviews too equally a self-review.) The employee should have written a self-appraisement prior to the meeting with his or her boss—a written document comparable to what the dominate is preparing. That way, both people in the meeting will exist focused on the documentation of task performance, instead of the boss focusing on the employee. Recollect: Nosotros do not evaluate people—we evaluate their results.

After a brief setting-the-tone introductory annotate or two by the boss, the employee should exist invited to go over his or her self-appraisal commencement. This helps eliminate defensiveness and gets the meeting off to a skilful start past establishing that it is a dialogue, a two-style conversation in which both parties tin can share observations, perspectives, and comments about chore performance.

Yous'll observe that your summit performers will commonly charge per unit themselves lower than yous do. That's because they have loftier expectations for themselves—often higher than yous have for them. You'll notice that the opposite is too true: Your poorest performers will often rate themselves higher than yous rate them. Any the situation, talking about the gap betwixt your evaluation and theirs will exist fruitful in getting you both on the same folio (both literally and figuratively) in terms of future expectations.

126790-wpb-5-ways-leaders-results

Mistake: The review process tries to serve as a coaching tool for employee development, likewise as a compensation tool to decide salary increases.
Solution: Your performance reviews should be washed for either development OR for compensation—non both. If y'all're interested in coaching and development for improved results in the future, so unhook compensation from the process and focus only on the work itself. Bear your performance review discussions as far away as you lot tin can from the time of year when salary decisions are made.

If you're doing reviews in order to make salary decisions, that's fine—merely be clear that that's what you're doing. Then you can carry your review conversations in the few weeks just earlier raises are announced.

The problem with trying to combine both employee evolution and compensation decisions in the aforementioned session is that employees are merely going to pay attention to the money—all the rest will go in one ear and out the other. You lot will go no coaching benefits from such a conversation. Employees will appear to be paying attention to what you're saying about their performance, but they're really just waiting to hear the magic number. Money talks—all else is lost.

Mistake: The person doing the appraisal has little or no twenty-four hours-to-day contact with the employee whose performance is existence judged.
Solution: This one is a no-brainer. The person having review conversations with an employee should be the supervisor or director who has the nearly contact with that employee and is in the best position to accurately assess twenty-four hour period-to-day results.

Mistake: Employees receive little or no advance notice of their "Judgment Solar day."
Solution: Performance discussions ideally should exist conducted on a regular basis, on a schedule well-known and well-publicized to anybody in the organisation.

Mistake: Managers are vague in their feedback to employees. Or they assign arbitrary numerical "grades" with little or no substantiation.
Solution: Functioning feedback needs to exist well documented in order to be constructive. Here's where information technology helps to take a skillful newspaper trail—documentation of both the good results and the not-so-skilful results.

Don't rely on your retentivity in outlining how well the employee accomplished his or her goals and met your expectations. (The human being memory is a mismatch detector and it will always exercise a good job of remembering the bad stuff, while forgetting the skilful stuff.) Proceed a file on each person who reports to yous, and make regular notes to yourself on beliefs and results as you observe them—the good, the bad, and yeah, fifty-fifty the ugly. Encourage your employees to proceed files for themselves, so that they, too, have documentation when they are writing their self-appraisals. Mutual documentation helps go along everyone'due south focus on the job, not on the person.

Mistake: The review process tries to evaluate traits, rather than behaviors and results.
Solution: This is one of the nigh mutual mistakes I meet on performance review forms—they try to evaluate personal traits, such as leadership, motivation, conscientiousness, attitude so on. The problem with traits is that they are internal and subjective— well-nigh incommunicable to evaluate on a fair basis.

Instead of traits, keep your evaluation focused on two things: Behaviors and results. Behaviors are actions that you lot can find directly—she did the filing, he answered the phone, she called on customers, he repaired the machines, and so on. Results are also observable: She accomplished her sales quota, he reduced waste by X%, she increased productivity past X amount, he completed his projects on time, and so on.

Fault: The appraisement is a once-a-year consequence that everyone tries to get through as quickly as they can, because it's painful for bosses and employees akin.
Solution: The primary goal in evaluating performance is to amend it. Therefore, you want to pattern a meaningful system of coaching conversations that people welcome, find useful, and deem valuable. Employees need regular feedback on how they're doing—what they're doing well and what needs improvement. Once a yr just doesn't cut it. Design a simple, easy to employ organisation that encourages bosses and employees to engage in 2-way conversations throughout the year—that'south the only way yous'll get any real mileage out of a operation review system.

Mistake: There is no investigation of causes that underlie employees' job operation issues.
Solution: People don't perform poorly for no reason. There are always causes—just you'll never know what those causes are if y'all don't brand the review procedure 1 of give and take, back up and coaching, with both parties focused on the same objective—doing the all-time job possible.

If an employee is performing poorly, ask questions. Don't assume you know the reason—or jump to conclusions that he's lazy, she'southward dumb, he's unmotivated, or she's incompetent. Use your performance review conversations as opportunities to find out what are the possible reasons for an employee's failure to meet standards and expectations. Hint: When an employee fails to perform fairly, the primary reason is often the dominate'south failure to coach!

Error: There is no follow-up action plan put in place at the end of the performance appraisal.
Solution: The concluding thing to talk over in a performance review chat is "What next?" What steps does the employee demand to take to brand sure that areas for comeback really improve? And what support does the employee demand from yous to make that happen? An activity plan is the perfect chemical element to conclude an effective performance review discussion. Go along it simple. 3 or four side by side steps are just fine. Recall, this is the beginning of the side by side cycle in the coaching process. Keep it positive and practical.

Mistake: Any effort at pay-for-performance is ineffective because the difference in pay for a summit performer and a mediocre performer is then minor every bit to exist meaningless.
Solution: Well-intentioned attempts at pay-for-performance often backlash because there is as well little money available OR direction is unwilling to brand the hard choices about giving big increases to top performers and no increases to poor performers. So they endeavour to offer a token of operation-based pay, which often backfires. The difference between a 3% increment and a 4% increase is meaningless in any real fiscal terms—and all it does is create jealousy, hurt feelings, and resentment among employees. My communication: If you can't come up with Existent money for REAL pay for performance, don't practise information technology at all. You're better off giving everyone the same percentage increment.

Are you a new manager trying to acquire the ropes on the job? The AMA provides many resource to assistance make the transition easier, including this webinar for new managers. Or continue your leadership training with our seminar on Preparing to Lead.

Related manufactures

  • Skills for Finer Coaching a Virtual Team
  • Performance Review Hooey
  • Get a People Architect: How to Maximize Employee Performance

About the Author(s)

BJ Gallagher is a Los Angeles workplace consultant, speaker, and author of YES Lives in the Land of NO: A Tale of Triumph Over Negativity (Berrett-Koehler; 2006). You lot can contact her at  or her spider web site, www.yeslivesinthelandofno.com.

Learn more about managing performance reviews with the AMA webinar:
Difficult Performance Reviews: How to Turn Painful Conversations into Positive Results