Performance Reviews: 10 Tips for New Managers
The biggest single discussion that causes more fear and pain for supervisors and employees is the dreaded performance review. Employees report widespread dissatisfaction with their performance management programs. Managers often lack the confidence or knowledge required to deliver valuable feedback. If executed well, delivering a performance review, and focusing on the right type of feedback can impact employee performance by more than 25% and have a positive benefit for both leader and employee.
The purpose of a performance review is to:
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- Establish a clear link between organization and individual objectives.
- Promote ongoing communication through coaching and meaningful feedback to employees.
- Encourage discussion and development of skills and competencies.
- Attract and retain staff.
- Identify, recognize, and reward high performers.
- Identify, recognize, and manage low performers.
Employees benefit from performance reviews by:
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- Having a clear understanding of how individual performance contributes to the company’s success.
- Having a clear understanding of how to meet expectations.
- Understanding how their performance is clearly linked to rewards.
- Identifying their learning and development needs.
- Having fair, accurate and regular feedback on strengths and areas for improvement.
Companies benefit from performance reviews by:
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- Increased productivity.
- Link between individual performance and organizational objectives.
- Accurate and consistent evaluation of employees’ overall performance.
- Acknowledgment of employee contributions.
Regardless of whether the performance review is done in person, on paper, or with an online tool, your attitude as a manager will have the most profound effect on your employee. Follow these 10 tips to ensure your next performance review is a success!
10 Tips for New Managers
Schedule sufficient time in a private setting.
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- Schedule enough time to discuss the formal review and answer your direct report’s questions. All performance feedback should be conducted in a private, one-on-one setting without any interruptions.
Practice
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- Rehearse the conversation for a meaningful discussion, particularly when delivering difficult messages. In addition, rehearsing helps ensure that you are confident and professional throughout, and do not appear to be anxious.
Transparency
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- Provide your performance review comments in advance of meeting with your employee. If they have not read your comments, then offer a copy of your review and allow a few minutes to read the document before starting the conversation.
Begin the discussion with areas of strengths.
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- Emphasis on strengths has the greatest potential impact on employee performance; consequently, managers should initiate the feedback with strengths, followed by development opportunities.
Focus on Behaviours.
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- Focus on the employee’s behaviors, not their personality, while delivering development feedback.
Provide Examples.
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- Validate your perspective with tangible and specific examples. Focus on consistent behaviors and frequent incidents, rather than one-off examples of good or bad behavior.
Provide suggestions for improvement.
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- Accompany negative feedback with specific suggestions for doing the job better. Constructive comments on development and specific suggestions for improvement are very valuable and have a potential impact on performance.
Avoid using jargon.
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- Maintain a structured flow during the conversation and cover one topic at a time to ensure clarity. Include a short introduction and avoid using jargon/obscure words to describe strengths and development areas.
Make the review process a two-way discussion.
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- Give the employee a few minutes to reflect on the feedback once you have delivered the review and ask for questions or thoughts.
End on a positive note and discuss next steps.
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- End the discussion on a positive note with a summary of the performance review. Schedule follow-up meetings to build the individual development plan and monitor progress.
In Summary
Performance reviews are important because they help managers and employees, alike, to gather their thoughts and become more familiar with the areas that are working well and those that need improvement. If done right, reviews can be one of the best tools for developing an employees’ career within a company.
Employees shouldn’t be terrified of walking into their performance review meeting. Nothing you should be discussing with them should be a surprise. If you’ve been doing your job properly throughout the year, the performance review discussion should be one more discussion in an on-going dialog of how your employee is performing.
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