Within many organizations, performance reviews between managers and their employees are an annual phenomenon; within some organizations this is even several times a year. Although holding performance reviews is on the agenda, this does not mean that it is also used for its intended purpose; improving the performance of employees. This article contains some tips and guidelines for conducting a performance review.
Purpose of performance review
The purpose of a performance review is not to communicate the manager’s opinion to the employee through one-way communication; this is only counterproductive. Moreover, a good manager ensures that an employee actually knows what the manager likes and dislikes about his work; It can never happen that an employee is surprised at a performance review by things that he/she would have done less well.
A good performance review is aimed at improving the employee’s performance and performance. This sounds logical, but has different consequences than many managers attach to this: Getting an employee to perform better does not only depend on the employee; A lot of it also depends on the manager himself. For example, has a manager provided the employee with sufficient guidance? Are the employee’s tasks tailored to the employee’s qualities? Does the employee need more responsibility in his/her work to stay motivated? All these questions must be answered in a performance review. This achieves the purpose of a performance review; improve the employee’s performance by implementing improvements on both the manager’s and the employee’s side.
Preparing a performance review
There are different ways to prepare performance reviews. Many organizations use a fixed format that is used by the manager to think about the employee and to feedback this to the employee. However, this does not work as productively as is often thought, as the employee himself is not involved. The better way to enter into a performance review is to work within a company or organizational context with two questionnaires with roughly the same questions. One list for the manager and one list for the employee. The questions that arise are aimed, among other things, at the employee’s past performance, but must also be aimed at, among other things, guidance. For example, one of the questions may be whether the employee has received sufficient guidance. For the employee, the question could be:
Have you received sufficient guidance in your work to be able to perform your tasks satisfactorily?
for the manager the question could be:
Have you provided the employee with sufficient guidance in his/her work to carry out the tasks satisfactorily?
The questions can also be composed in this way for the other important aspects of the questionnaires. Important other components include the employee’s motivation, whether the employee can handle more responsibilities, whether the employee’s qualities are used correctly, whether there are opportunities to make the work more attractive and whether there are other matters games that influence or could influence the employee’s performance.
By using such questionnaires and providing the employee with the questionnaire one week before the start of the interview, the manager will in principle force preparation from the employee, without the employee being negative about this.
Conducting a performance review
To go through the employee’s questionnaire, you can choose to hand in the questionnaire to the manager just before the interview; This way, the manager can compare the employee’s answers with his own answers in the conversation to focus on the differences and similarities in the questions. Another option is to have the employee keep the questionnaire himself, so that he or she can use it as a memory aid during the interview.
The conversation is not just about answering all the questions; the most important thing is to ask questions on as many topics as possible. In a good performance review, the manager is only concerned with asking questions: Why? How is that possible? What exactly do you mean by? This identifies the underlying reasons for an employee’s performance and allows for management to be taken accordingly; It is interesting that in most cases the answers to both questionnaires of the manager and the employee are almost identical: An employee and a manager do not differ much in their views on such topics! The advantage, however, is that an employee is less likely to become defensive if he/she has noticed something himself. Also take into account conversation techniques during the conversation, such as pausing to obtain more detailed answers from the employee.
Closing the performance review
At the conclusion of the performance review, it is important to make agreements during the conversation. Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-bound (SMART) agreements have the best results; This way everyone knows where they stand and it can also be measured whether goals are being achieved. It is important to immediately determine the date for a new performance review, so that the agreements can be analyzed there (or if necessary in the meantime) and further work can be done on improving performance. Make sure that agreements are kept alive among employees by reminding them occasionally.