10 Tips for Giving a Good Performance Review

Performance reviews are a very valuable motivator for many employees, and yet many managers don’t know how to properly give a good performance review. Here are 10 tips we’ve discovered for presenting a good and useful review.

1.  Be Prepared

• Document the good and bad performance of your employees throughout the year. If you keep a record, you will be more prepared when review time comes.
• Employees know right away if you’re not prepared for their review. If you’re not prepared it looks like you don’t take this seriously and therefore they won’t either.

2. Remember the Goal

• The goal of a review should be to have more communication, ensure alignment on key goals, recognize achievements, and build a strong sense of cooperation and teamwork.

3.  Appreciation

• There’s a lot of research that shows that salary is not the most important factor in motivation and job satisfaction (see McKinsey Quarterly: Motivating People: Getting Beyond Money). People want to feel useful and be appreciated. Recognize the employee’s contribution and commend them for a job well done.
• You should recognize the achievements of your team outside of the review cycle by giving them public kudos.

4.  Keep it professional

• Talk about work, not the employee’s personal life. What to say: “We’re here to talk about your performance over the past year and set goals for the upcoming year.” What not to say: “How are your kids?”

5.  Don’t do all of the talking!

• This should be a conversation between you and your employee – not a confrontation. Listen to their explanations or suggestions even if you are not willing to change your conclusions.
• Encourage your employees to keep notes in between your conversations so they’re also prepared to do some talking.

6.  Balance Positive and Negative

• People won’t listen if you just discuss the negative factors you’ve noticed in them. However, if you openly talk about the strengths you have seen in the past year, he or she will respect you and be willing to listen to the weaknesses you’ve observed.

7.  No surprises

• If you have something to discuss with your employee and the performance review isn’t for a few months, request a quick meeting with them. You don’t want to sit down in the performance review and say: “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this, but a few months ago I noticed….”

8.  Feedback should be as specific as possible

• Employees will have a difficult time responding to instructions or suggestions that are vague.  Taking the time to gather your thoughts and deliver your message clearly will increase you chance of getting the results you want.

9.  Don’t withhold

• It’s not a good idea to hold back the negative feedback that you have. You don’t want to criticize too much and cause them to feel discouraged, but remember that people need to know how they’re doing.

10.  Follow up!

• If you’ve made suggestions to an employee and notice the changes in their work, let them know. When you follow up and recognize the effort they’ve made you show that the work is important.
• Try Rypple to follow up with coaching and mentoring. It’s and easy way to have continuous discussions with employees and commend them on their improvements.

It’s hard to give a good performance review if you have no idea about what the employee has been doing for the last year. Try Rypple and be productive throughout the year by tracking your employees actions and feedback using the coaching and mentoring tools. You’ll be more prepared when review time sneaks up on you!