6 tips for writing an effective performance review (7 Minutes)

When conducted effectively, the performance review process can be a very powerful tool for motivating the employees and helping them in reaching their goals. It has been found that lack of growth opportunities is one of the top three reasons why employees choose to quit a job.

So, when you prepare for the next performance management cycle, you need to consider implementing these 6 tips to help you adopt the performance process which fits the needs of your company.

Following are the 6 tips which you should always keep in mind as you get ready to write the next performance review.

1. Need to write a performance review in regular intervals
Assessing the employee’s performance is extremely vital for employee engagement and the company’s success, yet many employees are not very keen about the prospect of going through an employee performance review. Still, you need to do the performance reviews regularly in order to check in with your employees and help them focus on creating and measuring their progress. People usually crave for change and this is more so when people feel that their lives have gone on hold and there is no growth.

2. Make sure to include the focus on growth
There are many companies which use the performance reviews solely to measure and assess the performance of an employee. However, the performance reviews can also be utilized to identify the key areas of improvement and enhance the employee’s future performance to create good growth prospects.
In order to keep your employees engaged and retain them, you have to ensure that your performance process includes setting the right developmental goals, have frequent discussions on the progress in their development on1-1 basis and reflect on their progress during their performance reviews. In doing so, your company can clearly demonstrate its commitment towards the employees' future growth and enable them to have a vision on how and why staying with your company will help them grow.

3. Customize your templates correctly
You need to think about how you can leverage the performance reviews to realign with the expectations of the employees and make your workforce stay motivated.
For that purpose, you have to customize the language of your company in order to reinforce the company values and behaviors and focus on the human aspects of their performance.
You need to make sure that your rating scales are right for your company. Usually, the rating scales on the employee performance reviews get a very bad rap. The reviews might be viewed as inaccurate, impersonal and lacking in evaluating the employee’s performance correctly. Customizing your rating scales can help in personalizing your company’s approach to the reviews during this sensitive period in which we are in now due to the pandemic.

4. Stay unbiased in the process
With a lot employees still working remotely, gathering the feedback from multiple sources is an extremely important step in reducing the biases in the performance review process. You can add more transparency by allowing the employees to nominate who is best placed in order to provide the feedback as a part of the performance review. You need to take out time to learn about which are the common biases that impact the performance reviews and how you can help in mitigating those and  design neutral performance assessments.

5. Always double check the employee data
You need to always make sure that no employee falls through the cracks. In order to do that you can easily use a hierarchy to map the employee’s data. This helps in identifying  and correcting any loop holes and ensuring that no employees or managers are left out of the performance review process.

6. Prepare your employees and the managers too
If you fail to prepare then you are preparing to fail, it’s an old saying which we all know. We’ve found this to be very true when it comes down to the performance reviews. You have to make sure that you communicate early and frequently about the importance of the performance reviews, the timelines and what the employees and the managers should expect from it.

SUMMARY: Always remember that you have to make the most of the performance review process. However, performance management can be very confusing and frustrating for both the employees and the administrators equally. But, you can change this status quo by customizing the process to speak about the unique needs and goals of your organization, eliminate the biases and communicate consistently and clearly. Creating a very transparent experience which showcases your company’s values can help in building trust in the process and encourage actual development and growth of the employee. Finally, this will set you up to handle the current and the future uncertainty in a very planned way.