Performance Reviews. Annual appraisals. Employee evaluations. Whatever they’re called in your organisation, the chances are they’re not well-liked. In many surveys, appraisals are viewed as a waste of time; a simplistic statement of fact followed by a ‘well done, see you next year’.
Others view appraisals as far too stressful, particularly in workplace cultures that are inclined towards only focusing on the here and now. Even when an appraisal is entirely positive, some people feel that their achievements and efforts are going unnoticed leading to a drop in productivity, motivation, and morale.
Among older workers, appraisals are often a “going through the motions” distraction when they could be doing something useful with their time.
What can business leaders do to make appraisals less of a morale-sapping, time-consuming drain and be more inspiring, motivating, and far less stressful?
Ditch Them Entirely
It’s a possibly radical proposition, but rather than the formal nature of an annual review, many would prefer a regular, informal performance-orientated chat. No business leader is going to let performance issues mount up over several months, and if you’re only praising a good performance once a year then you’re not doing much to consistently motivate your people.
Instead of the annual appraisal, why not switch to a monthly informal meeting where you can give feedback that is going to be more relevant and provide more timely praise for a good performance?
Don’t Just Focus on the Here and Now
If switching to a rolling performance review structure simply isn’t feasible, then ensure that your annual or bi-annual reviews consider everything covered within the period. We all have a few bad weeks from time-to-time, and sometimes those weeks coincide with an upcoming review. Always remember the key sports phrase, “form is temporary, but class is permanent.”
If you’re about to sit down with someone who has had a drop-off in form, don’t forget about the project they aced six months’ ago, or the previous years of consistent excellence. Take the opportunity to dig down into the reasons for the recent drop off in performance by demonstrating your knowledge of their usual capability.
Focus on the Future
Appraisals without a focus on the future are ultimately worthless. Who wants to sit and listen to a recap of the past 6-12 months? They know what they did, they’re the ones who did it! Instead, ask them about their own ambitions and goals, inform them of the company’s outline for the next year, and use the opportunity to suggest training programmes that might lead to advancement opportunities for them.
The best employers with the highest levels of engagement never stop selling the benefits of working for them, and the appraisal is your opportunity to gain commitment from your people for the next year by providing them with something to reach for.
Invite Your People to Review Themselves
At Uber, leadership devised the “Top Three, Bottom Three” process whereby their people are asked to rank themselves in their greatest strengths and weaknesses. From this data, leadership is able to better formulate strategies for growth, improvement, and monitoring of the individual’s performance in key areas. It helps establish whether there is a training need, either on an individual or group basis, or whether a particular employee is suffering from a lack of confidence.
Provide Rewards
In some organisations, annual reviews are linked to pay increases but that’s not always the case. Where it isn’t, then it’s still good practice to ensure that there is more than just a “pat on the back” for those people who have truly excelled during the performance review cycle. Rewards can be anything from gift vouchers, tickets to events, or even just a pint after work. It’s about making people feel seen and appreciated, and not just strings of data on some papers or in a spreadsheet.
Cultivate a Feedback Culture
Even if your organisation is wedded to the annual appraisal cycle, it’s best to ensure that feedback is both given and received throughout the year – both formally and informally. There is not a single advantage in acting aloof about your feelings regarding a person’s performance, just as there isn’t any benefit to a business that avoids thoughts and critique from its own people.
Nobody should be nervously awaiting their leader’s views on their performance. Make sure they have a good idea what they’re going to hear long before they’re sat waiting for the results.
Don’t Assume You Know Everything
Some leaders pride themselves on possessing a supernatural ability to know everything about their people. You almost certainly don’t. We’re not regularly encouraged to share non-workplace concerns with our leaders, and in many office cultures people actively avoid mentioning struggles they may have outside of the workplace for fear that it will negatively impact their standing within the organisation.
You may have some metrics and KPIs to help evaluate your employee performance but that’s all that info is – help. It doesn’t tell the true story, and you may need to build trust, remain positive, and cultivate a culture of empathy and compassion to get the full story.
