Performance review time of year can be an anxious period for your team members as they prepare for their review meetings. But what about the requirements and extra work on the team leader who needs to thoroughly prepare performance reviews for each member of his team?
What few things can he do to prepare both the review of the previous period, and the goals for the next period?
1. Help the Person Being Reviewed to Prepare
Last week we discussed the ways in which people can prepare for their own performance review. You can read the article here, and I’d recommend passing on the link to your team members to help them get prepared. Also make sure to give them a copy of the review procedures, forms and templates so that they know how the review will run and what areas will be addressed, and give them enough time during work hours to get well prepared.
If you have access to their performance review from last year and the goals that were set at that time, it is useful to make sure the team member also has a copy of this in order to be ready to discuss their performance against those goals.
2. Gather Evidence about the Review Period
For each behavioral section or category in the performance review, you need to prepare examples of where the team member has met the requirements of the category, or failed to meet the requirements. This is often easier said than done if you are relying on your memory alone. I suggest three tips to help with this:
Keep notes throughout the entire year, either in your diary or in your email system – full details about how to do this are discussed in our article here. If you didn’t do this over the last year, now is the time to start so that you are in a much better position next year.
Let the team member take care of preparing a lot of the examples. Provide them with the areas that will be reviewed, and ask them to prepare items under each area which demonstrate how they have performed.
Talk to the team member’s peers. It is perfectly acceptable to meet with people who work closely with your team member to discuss his or her performance. To reduce some of the anxiety people may feel in discussing their peer’s work, make sure to focus on the behaviour categories from the review, and ask the person to only talk about examples of behaviours, actions, or outcomes that they have personally witnessed. You should avoid accepting comments about what they think of your team members “attitude”, or things which they heard from someone else.
Finally, look at the goals which were set for the team member at the beginning of the period under review. If the goals were well written using the SMART principles (or our much easier MT principles), then it should be straightforward to determine how the person has performed in relation to the required outcomes.
3. Prepare Goals for the Next Period
Many performance review processes include a section at the end which looks ahead and sets goals and development opportunities for the year ahead. These may or may not then be linked to the person’s bonus or other pay incentive.
I recommend you review Mining Man’s article on setting goals, and why the SMART model for goals can make things more complicated than it should be. There is a link at the bottom of this article.
The key points to remember when setting goals for the coming period are:
Make sure the person has the authority to control the outcome
Make sure the results are measureable
Leave one empty space for a goal that you come up with during your meeting in collaboration with the team member
4. Make it a Part of the Whole Year
Once the performance review meeting is complete and the paper work has been filled out and sent to HR, the things covered in the review should not be forgotten. Towards the end of the review meeting, discuss with your team member how you will keep a ongoing track of performance towards their goals.
This may be through regular meetings (monthly for example) where you will go through the performance review document and make updates on progress in the previous month. The benefits of this are huge compared to the time invested:
You have an up to date record of achievements and events throughout the whole year when you come to prepare next year’s review
You are able monitor progress towards goals and provide coaching where necessary
Negative or improvement issues will get discussed promptly rather than being left to the annual review
The annual employee performance review should be considered as just one part in an overall way of managing your team, and it should be integrated into all the other parts. By committing to regular reviews, both yourself and your team member stand to benefit from better communications and more frequent assessment of their performance.
Good luck with the performance reviews for your team. Remember that with good preparation, a focus on the benefits of good goal setting, and an effective and open discussion about performance, the review system can be a lot more than just a paperwork session. Make the review something to look forward to and something from which both parties can gain value.
Cheers,
Jamie Ross – Mining Man
Links to articles relevant to this story:
How to Prepare for Your Performance Review
Why SMART Goals are not the SMART!
This article was published by: Mining Man
Visit the original article here
