The DOs and DON'Ts of Operation Reviews

Jan 07, 2020

By BJ Gallagher

Is there anyone in the workplace who has non undergone the torture of a performance review done badly? I'm sure we have all had to suffer the torment of a well-intentioned but badly-executed performance appraisement—in which we felt as if we were the ones being executed! Blindfold, anyone? Got any last words earlier the verbal assault begins? I don't even smoke merely I'm tempted to ask for a final cigarette!

Well-nigh operation review systems in nearly organizations are so poorly designed and conducted that they actually exercise more harm than skillful. I frequently tell my clients that they would exist meliorate off doing goose egg rather than doing what they're currently doing! I'm not kidding.

Here are 10 common mistakes managers make, and tips for avoiding them. These are practical activeness steps you can take to blueprint and implement a arrangement that will exercise what yous desire it to practice—improve functioning!

Mistake: The performance review is a 1-way, tiptop-down process in which the boss serves as judge and jury of employees' behavior and achievements on the task.
Solution: Make it a two-way process, at the very least. (If you really want an effective review arrangement, design a 360-degree system that involves peer reviews as well as a self-review.) The employee should accept written a self-appraisement prior to the meeting with his or her boss—a written document comparable to what the boss is preparing. That style, both people in the meeting volition be focused on the documentation of task functioning, instead of the boss focusing on the employee. Call up: We practice not evaluate people—we evaluate their results.

Afterward a brief setting-the-tone introductory comment or two by the boss, the employee should be invited to go over his or her self-appraisal first. This helps eliminate defensiveness and gets the meeting off to a good commencement by establishing that it is a dialogue, a 2-way conversation in which both parties can share observations, perspectives, and comments about job performance.

Y'all'll observe that your height performers will unremarkably rate themselves lower than y'all practise. That's because they have loftier expectations for themselves—oftentimes higher than you take for them. You'll find that the reverse is besides truthful: Your poorest performers volition often rate themselves higher than you rate them. Whatever the situation, talking about the gap between your evaluation and theirs will exist fruitful in getting y'all both on the same page (both literally and figuratively) in terms of futurity expectations.

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Mistake: The review process tries to serve as a coaching tool for employee development, likewise as a compensation tool to determine salary increases.
Solution: Your operation reviews should be done for either development OR for compensation—not both. If you're interested in coaching and evolution for improved results in the future, so unhook compensation from the process and focus only on the work itself. Bear your operation review discussions as far abroad as you tin from the time of twelvemonth when salary decisions are made.

If yous're doing reviews in order to make salary decisions, that's fine—just be clear that that'due south what you're doing. Then yous can conduct your review conversations in the few weeks only before raises are appear.

The problem with trying to combine both employee development and compensation decisions in the aforementioned session is that employees are only going to pay attention to the coin—all the balance will go in one ear and out the other. Y'all will get no coaching benefits from such a conversation. Employees will appear to be paying attention to what yous're maxim most their operation, only they're really just waiting to hear the magic number. Money talks—all else is lost.

Mistake: The person doing the appraisal has piffling or no day-to-day contact with the employee whose performance is being judged.
Solution: This one is a no-brainer. The person having review conversations with an employee should be the supervisor or manager who has the most contact with that employee and is in the best position to accurately assess twenty-four hour period-to-twenty-four hour period results.

Mistake: Employees receive little or no accelerate find of their "Judgment Day."
Solution: Performance discussions ideally should exist conducted on a regular basis, on a schedule well-known and well-publicized to anybody in the organization.

Error: Managers are vague in their feedback to employees. Or they assign arbitrary numerical "grades" with little or no substantiation.
Solution: Functioning feedback needs to exist well documented in order to exist effective. Here'due south where it helps to have a good newspaper trail—documentation of both the good results and the not-so-expert results.

Don't rely on your retentiveness in outlining how well the employee accomplished his or her goals and met your expectations. (The human retentiveness is a mismatch detector and information technology will always do a good chore of remembering the bad stuff, while forgetting the expert stuff.) Keep a file on each person who reports to you lot, and make regular notes to yourself on behavior and results as you find them—the good, the bad, and yes, even the ugly. Encourage your employees to keep files for themselves, so that they, likewise, have documentation when they are writing their self-appraisals. Mutual documentation helps go along everyone'southward focus on the job, non on the person.

Mistake: The review process tries to evaluate traits, rather than behaviors and results.
Solution: This is one of the most mutual mistakes I come across on functioning review forms—they endeavor to evaluate personal traits, such every bit leadership, motivation, conscientiousness, attitude and then on. The problem with traits is that they are internal and subjective— well-nigh impossible to evaluate on a fair footing.

Instead of traits, keep your evaluation focused on two things: Behaviors and results. Behaviors are actions that you can observe direct—she did the filing, he answered the phone, she called on customers, he repaired the machines, and then on. Results are as well observable: She achieved her sales quota, he reduced waste by 10%, she increased productivity by 10 amount, he completed his projects on time, so on.

Mistake: The appraisal is a in one case-a-twelvemonth event that anybody tries to get through every bit quickly equally they can, considering it's painful for bosses and employees alike.
Solution: The primary goal in evaluating functioning is to ameliorate information technology. Therefore, you lot want to blueprint a meaningful arrangement of coaching conversations that people welcome, observe useful, and deem valuable. Employees need regular feedback on how they're doing—what they're doing well and what needs improvement. Once a twelvemonth just doesn't cutting it. Design a simple, piece of cake to use system that encourages bosses and employees to appoint in two-style conversations throughout the year—that's the merely way you'll go any real mileage out of a functioning review system.

Error: There is no investigation of causes that underlie employees' task performance issues.
Solution: People don't perform poorly for no reason. There are always causes—but yous'll never know what those causes are if yous don't make the review process one of give and take, support and coaching, with both parties focused on the same objective—doing the best job possible.

If an employee is performing poorly, inquire questions. Don't assume yous know the reason—or jump to conclusions that he's lazy, she'south dumb, he'south unmotivated, or she's incompetent. Apply your operation review conversations as opportunities to find out what are the possible reasons for an employee's failure to see standards and expectations. Hint: When an employee fails to perform adequately, the primary reason is frequently the boss's failure to coach!

Fault: There is no follow-up action programme put in place at the cease of the functioning appraisement.
Solution: The terminal thing to talk over in a performance review conversation is "What next?" What steps does the employee need to have to make sure that areas for improvement actually amend? And what support does the employee need from y'all to make that happen? An action programme is the perfect chemical element to conclude an effective operation review discussion. Proceed it simple. Three or four side by side steps are but fine. Remember, this is the beginning of the next bicycle in the coaching procedure. Proceed it positive and applied.

Error: Any attempt at pay-for-functioning is ineffective considering the departure in pay for a top performer and a mediocre performer is and then small as to be meaningless.
Solution: Well-intentioned attempts at pay-for-performance often backfire because at that place is too little money available OR direction is unwilling to make the hard choices virtually giving large increases to height performers and no increases to poor performers. So they effort to offer a token of operation-based pay, which ofttimes backfires. The difference between a 3% increase and a 4% increase is meaningless in any existent financial terms—and all information technology does is create jealousy, injure feelings, and resentment among employees. My advice: If you can't come up up with Existent money for REAL pay for performance, don't do it at all. You're better off giving anybody the same percentage increment.

Are you a new manager trying to acquire the ropes on the task? The AMA provides many resources to help make the transition easier, including this webinar for new managers. Or continue your leadership training with our seminar on Preparing to Atomic number 82.

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About the Writer(s)

BJ Gallagher is a Los Angeles workplace consultant, speaker, and author of YES Lives in the State of NO: A Tale of Triumph Over Negativity (Berrett-Koehler; 2006). You can contact her at  or her web site, www.yeslivesinthelandofno.com.

Learn more well-nigh managing operation reviews with the AMA webinar:
Difficult Performance Reviews: How to Plough Painful Conversations into Positive Results