There are so many different ways to conduct performance reviews, but how do you know what is right for you? In many ways, it depends on why you are using performance reviews – for compliance, to determine salary increases, to measure team member success, to gather feedback, or for coaching opportunities. Below are five different types of performance reviews that you can use depending on the needs of your company and the driving factor behind why reviews are conducted.
Traditional Performance Review
When we think of the traditional performance review, we tend to think of an appraisal that runs on a schedule (usually annually) and involves the manager and employee. There can be other variations, such as mid-year reviews or the omission of the employee from the review, but the ultimate outcome from this traditional review is a score.
Some of the elements scored within the traditional review can include competencies, skills, goals, and achievements. Participants in the appraisal score appraise elements and a final score is calculated based on the feedback given by the participants.
In many cases, the scores from traditional performance reviews are used to determine top performers, as a basis for salary increases, or to document that reviews have been completed.
Project-Based Appraisal
As opposed to the traditional performance review, project-based appraisals are run at the end of an employee’s involvement on a project team to determine how that employee completed their portion of the project. Additionally, instead of the primary reviewer on the appraisal being the manager, the project lead takes on this responsibility.
Similar to the traditional performance review, these project-based appraisals can also include competencies, skills, goals, and achievements which the project team lead can review. Additionally, the participants review these items so that a final score is calculated.
Project-based appraisals are great for tracking a team’s members input in a project.
Continuous Feedback
As companies move away from score-based appraisal, continuous feedback is taking over as the way for managers and employee to track progress toward employee goals. This is an easy feedback process for when companies don’t want to use scores.
Continuous feedback provides set meeting points between the manager and employee to document notes and progress towards goals.
These are a great tool for tracking feedback, and can be combined with the traditional performance review process to give both scored and feedback based performance options.
360 Appraisal
This type of appraisal can solicit feedback from others both inside and outside of the organization that open up the review process beyond just the self and manager reviews and scores. As with the continuous feedback, this information gathered can be useful as a one-off, but also can be a great tool for getting feedback and using this as a part of the traditional performance review.
New Hire Review
New hire reviews are typically done 90 days to 6 months after start date and enables managers to review a new hire on specific competencies, skills, goals, and achievements. Both the manager and employee can be involved in tracking progress, and these are typically done at the end of a probationary period to make sure the employee is fit for the job and meeting expectations.
This review style is beneficial for giving great feedback and seeing where this new hire will excel and needs maybe more work in the role they were assigned, to hopefully help them improve and grow in the long run.
Whichever performance review works best for your company having an automated system will also be beneficial in the long run, and will help measure and keep track of everyone in one area. Read our Performance Product Guide to show what key features you should be looking when using an automated system.