The Wrong Way to Do Performance Reviews
Performance reviews. The annual process that most big companies roll out each and every year to the disdain of employees and the groan of managers.
Annual performance reviews are dead. Big players like Adobe and GE have realised this and have moved to more regular reviews on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis, and rightly so.
We don’t live in a world where performance should be assessed at yearly intervals anymore. Technology is enabling people to work faster, smarter and more collaboratively than ever. But technology aside, people don't want to wait a year to find out how they have performed or to be given overdue feedback from a project nine months ago.
We live in a world where feedback is fast and straightforward. Twelve-year-old girls post images on Instagram and if they don’t get the likes they want within thirty minutes they take it down and try another post. And we should be embracing this for the business world.
The rules of work are changing. In the growing “gig economy” there is an Uber-like software company in America that provide casual/part time employees for businesses through an app. Companies can “hire” employees at the click of a button to cover busy periods and peak trading times. Feedback is then left on the app, the “employee” is paid and the two part ways.
Giving employees real, relevant and timely feedback in regular performance conversations is a necessity that all companies should embrace. They don’t need to be hour long meetings every week, but they need to be structured in a way that both the employee and manager get the most out of them and that will be different with each team member.
For managers wanting to get the most out of their team, a switch to more regular reviews is a must. You can react faster to changes in the business as well as improving the coaching environment for your team. But don’t make them overly bureaucratic. Keep things simple like successes, challenges, assistance/development, and feedback. Four topics that can structure the conversation and allow an honest discussion on real-time performance.
For employees trying to progress within a company; you should be asking for these too. If you could get almost instantaneous feedback on your performance, you could pivot, adapt, and develop at a faster rate as well as ultimately becoming more valuable to your organisation.
We’ll cover how to better compare and assess performance between team members in another post. But for now, having regular performance conversations with your team members is definitely the best way to get the most out of everyone’s time and gives you the best chance to hit your team’s goals.
The 121 document in our development toolkit gives a quick easy to use template to structure 121 conversations. To access this, please click here and signup to our newsletter.
