While today's workplaces are shifting toward continual, informal employee feedback, annual reviews are still crucial for understanding and formally documenting how employees are performing. These reviews also help your employees understand what you expect of them and set appropriate goals for the year ahead.
Most managers have a formal yearly review process in place, but there’s always room for improvement. The experts of Forbes Human Resources Council shared strategies for creating a more effective and impactful review process for everyone involved.
1. Provide A Positive Experience
The annual review process should be viewed as a positive experience. This is a time for the manager and team members to come together and celebrate success, discuss what was accomplished over the past year, set goals or determine areas of growth. Managers should approach this as a conversation and ask open-ended questions, so team members have the opportunity to share thoughts or new ideas. - Debi Bliazis, Champions School of Real Estate
2. Ask Great Questions To Achieve Your Review Objectives
The quality of reviews depends on the questions you ask. Thinking about your questions from the perspectives of both the feedback provider and receiver will drive better conversations. Remember, many employees want more coaching from their manager, and leaders often agree the purpose of performance reviews is to develop employees. - Rachel Ernst, Reflektive
3. Look At Results And How They Were Achieved
By asking how something was achieved, you can coach employees into developing strategies to make them more successful. It shows them that the outcomes were in their control and will be going forward. It also helps open the conversation to what they enjoyed or didn't like, rather than being solely about what objectives were hit. - Karla Reffold, BeecherMadden
4. Listen Carefully
Make the annual review about growth. I like to use this time to find out about the employee's aspirations and lay out my expectations. It's not the time to itemize everything that has been done right or wrong. It should be a 50-50 discussion, and managers have the responsibility of asking questions and listening during an annual review. - Michele Markey, SkillPath
5. Bring Your Feedback Notes From The Entire Year
Annual reviews can be more effective and positively impactful for all parties when there has been an ongoing process of coaching, feedback and journaling throughout the performance year. By having an ongoing review process, the manager and employee can keep track of goals, projects and development plans to adjust as needed throughout the performance year. The end of year review is a recap. - Sherry Martin, OmniTRAX
6. Crowdsource It
Crowdsourcing performance feedback from social recognition systems throughout the year provides more than just one isolated point of view. It results in a wider and more accurate performance collage based on organic and real-time perspectives. This viewpoint diversity compiles valuable data that empowers the entire organization to have buy-in for both the process and success of the workforce. - Dr. Timothy J. Giardino, Cantata Health, LLC
7. Implement A More Dynamic Feedback Process
Feedback is very important to maintaining an engaged workforce — if done properly. The drawback to annual reviews is that they only paint a small picture of a very large time span and often reduce employees to a standardized measurement of performance. Organizations are better served by utilizing feedback processes that are as dynamic as the people they employ. - Lucy Rivas-Enriquez, Union Rescue Mission - Los Angeles
8. Discuss Specific Projects
Many employees already perform at an above-average pace by doing their jobs well. To motivate these already competent workers, ask them to provide a list of projects from the last year that they were proud of, then specifically discuss them in the review. You also may have other team members evaluate the project to provide a more detailed view of how the employee positively affected the outcome. - Cameron Bishop, SkillPath
9. Stop Having Performance Conversations Once A Year
Performance reviews are not a once-per-year process, despite the way organizations make it seem by having you fill out a form once per year. Strong leaders have performance conversations all year long. They give feedback to employees about what they need to work on and what they value about them. It is an ongoing process. - Lotus Buckner, NCH
