Business Management Daily

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For managers, reviewing employee performance is a daunting yet critical function of their job. Yet you need not look upon it with dread.

Instead, approach the performance appraisal process as a golden opportunity to give your staff feedback, listen to employee comments, review the job description, and discuss and correct performance problems.

Use performance logs to simplify employee reviews

If you’re relying solely on your memory to evaluate employee performance, you’re making appraisals far more difficult than necessary. That’s why it’s best to institute a simple recording system to document employee performance.

For each employee you supervise, the file should include a copy of the person’s job description, job application and résumé. Then follow these steps for recording performance:

1. Include positive and negative behaviors.
2. Date each entry.
3. Write observations, not assumptions.
4. Keep out biased language.
5. Be brief, but complete.
6. Track trends.


Tip: Performance reviews shouldn’t be paper-moving exercises that return zero value. Read the five symptoms that warn of trouble in a supervisor’s appraisal process in 10 Secrets to an Effective Performance Review, a new special report from Business Management Daily.


Turn the review meeting into a productive exchange

Approach the appraisal review as a mutual learning experience for you and the employee. You can gain valuable insights from your staffers, and you have information and experience that can help bring out their best.

Help the employee feel at ease from the outset. But don’t get caught up in small talk. False intimacy may increase the employee’s discomfort and destroy the meeting’s businesslike tone. By the same token, don’t make light of the review process or give the impression that you are just “going through the motions.”

Emphasize that this meeting is important and you want it to be productive. Also at the beginning, provide an overview of the points you want to discuss with the employee. Make it clear that you don’t expect to do all the talking.

Start by discussing any problems you’ve observed with the employee’s performance. Address each problem individually, cite specific examples and let the employee respond. Don’t bring up a new problem until you’ve thoroughly discussed the current one. Use the following framework to discuss each problem:

•    Describe the performance problem. Focus on the employee’s results and behavior in specific, nonjudgmental terms.

•    Reinforce performance standards. Your staffer already should know the standards you expect, so don’t spend a lot of time discussing them. Review them quickly, then move on. If the employee challenges the validity of a standard, calmly state your reasons for requiring it, and gently steer the conversation back to the reasons the person didn’t comply.
 
•    Develop a plan for improvement. Your review preparation should have included a plan for helping the employee improve performance. During the meeting, the employee may suggest additional solutions. Agree on a method for improving performance in the short run, and establish some options in case the first method proves ineffective.

•    Offer your help. Show your commitment by helping your staffer obtain training, resources or other assistance to reach performance goals.

•    Alternate negative and positive comments. If you have a list of performance problems to address, be sure to insert some positive comments along the way.

•    Emphasize potential. Remind employees that they can apply their strengths to their weaknesses. For example, an employee whose reports are riddled with statistical errors may have successfully designed a complex computer model. The employee clearly is capable of producing accurate work, so point that out.


Help employees reach their peak performance: 4 steps

To help your employees maximize their productivity, use these four practices to define what you mean by high performance and lay out how you expect your people to attain it:

1. Involve them in setting goals. Never assume you’ve got buy-in. Rather than blindly dropping project goals, individual goals or the organization’s goals onto workers, approach them with the thought, “What do you think you can achieve?” Then negotiate your expectations.

2. Keep the goals realistic. Any goal—whether it’s at work, at home or on the athletic field—needs to be difficult, desirable and doable. Setting goals too high will only deflate the worker; setting them too low will erase the challenge of work, which will turn off the person in its own way.

3. Hit their buttons. People have their own motivations; find out what they are. Examples: the will to win, enjoyment of teamwork or a higher mission, such as helping clients succeed. Express the overarching vision, and then let your people figure out how to make it happen.

4. Avoid micromanaging. You may want to lay out every detail of how employees should achieve those goals, but resist the temptation. If you spend most of your managing time telling employees how to do their work, rather than trusting them to reach the clear goals you’ve set, you’re treading into micromanagement waters.