Performance Reviews – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Performance Reviews – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

When it comes to performance reviews, many companies have a way they are (or aren’t) doing it now, but are on the lookout for best practices or new ideas to make their process better and increase the effectiveness of the tools they use.  With this in mind, we bring to you a few good, bad, and ugly things to help you streamline your techniques.

The Good

  • Providing opportunities for regular check-ins and feedback sessions.

Performance reviews should not be an event that happens once a year, causes a lot of stress, and then is forgotten about otherwise. Set your goals early, and provide employees and managers with a forum when they can meet regularly and discuss these. One way to do this is to include scheduled feedback sessions in your process, and then make providing feedback easy in an online tool. Don’t just talk about how you encourage feedback, but put a process in place that reminds managers and helps you gather this feedback in a central location.

The Bad

  • Not including your employees in the process.

Performance reviews should not be a one-way street where the manager has all of the power and the employee doesn’t have a say. Yes, we want to have manager feedback, but it is equally important to involve the employee in the progress so that they understand what is expected of them and they are able to provide feedback on their own progress.

The Ugly

  • Having a process so confusing or hard no one does it.

When your process is so cumbersome that employees and managers don’t want to do, you will spend a lot of time nagging them to complete things, and you will probably end up with a large segment of the population who either doesn’t complete reviews on time, or doesn’t complete them at all. Make sure that the objectives of your review are clear, and make it easy for everyone to figure out what they are supposed to do and when.

For other ways to make sure that your next performance review doesn’t fall under the Bad or Ugly category use this data sheet to help you win at your next assessment.

Goal Setting. Why Bother?

Goal Setting. Why Bother?

Why is it so important that organizations set clear, well developed goals? Many of us see goal setting as a chore we must complete at the beginning of each appraisal cycle without really understanding the impact or importance of the process. If done correctly, goals can motivate employees, help align business processes and improve the overall performance of the company.

How can goals help to align employees and business units with the overall organizational business processes? There needs to be great visibility throughout the goals of the company. If realistic goals are set and there is a vast deal of information sharing during the goal creation process, goals throughout the organization will be consistent. Visibility into the organizational goals enables employees to align their own goals with those of the organization to ensure they are helping support and contribute to the future of the company. Furthermore, this can help clarify the roles of all employees in the company so they are clear in how their performance contributes to the overall success.

Not only is determining a realistic time frame a key factor in monitoring a goal, but also determining how it will be achieved and how it will be measured. In some cases, a particular goal may require several objectives to be adequately monitored. Goals without objectives are essentially meaningless because progress is impossible to measure. It is this level of specificity sets goals and objectives apart.

The bottom line is that goal setting is not just an annual exercise all employees need to go through so they can check off the box in their list of tasks to complete. Goals are critical to the success of a company and when the proper attention and priority are given to the creation of realistic goals, the outcome realized will definitely be well worth the effort invested up-front.