How To Write An Effective Performance Review

A performance review can be defined as a formal process of assessing an employee’s contribution to the organization during a specific period of time. Performance evaluation is normally done by the manager based on the employee’s overall performance, strengths, and opportunities. The managers provide feedback, set goals, and plans the path to work on opportunity areas or areas of improvement.

Employee performance review is critical for every business. These reviews if conducted in a structured and effective manner can help your employees reach newer heights or vice-versa. Hence, it becomes critical for any organization to have a strong and structured performance evaluation method. Equally important is providing this review/feedback to the employees so that it motivates them while letting them know about their growth opportunities and areas of improvement.

What Is An Employee Performance Review?

It is a process of assessing an employee on their performance over a period of time. Ideally, it should be a two-way process between the employee and the manager. The manager can review the performance, provide feedback, highlight strengths and growth opportunities, and convey the areas of improvement in a formal manner and the employee can share his side of feedback with the manager.

Traditionally, the companies have annual or half-yearly reviews, the organizations are now shifting to the trend of evaluating their employees more often. Many companies even perform monthly and weekly reviews also. Regardless of how frequently the reviews are happening, the outcome should be beneficial for both the employees and the managers. Any feedback should not come as a surprise to either party.

 

What To Include In The Review Process?

The basic process of review in all the industries includes the following criteria:

• Quality and accuracy of provided responsibilities
• Problem Solving
• Teamwork
• Time and attendance
• Additional responsibilities taken

Providing grades in every area and then weighing them relatively is what a typical review process structure is comprised of. This exercise should be done as the base work for the review. The face-to-face meeting should be set up subsequently to elaborately discuss these points, Employees should be given a fair chance of providing their feedback during the discussion. While providing the feedback, the following points should be considered:

• Feedback should be constructive and no surprises should be thrown. Make regular notes of the points so that you don’t assess only on the points you remember. You may miss out on important achievements of the employee or providing feedback on the improvement area.
• It is equally important to recognize the top performers. Don’t neglect this considering they are doing their job well. The employee, if not recognized, can lose the zeal and enthusiasm of taking that extra initiative. Pick every opportunity to communicate how valued they are for the organization.
• Honesty works best everywhere. Be honest while providing feedback. Choosing the right words makes it effective but not addressing the areas of concern will not help. Provide clarity on expectations and ensure to know the requirements of the employee to achieve the goals.
• Having a face-to-face conversation helps in avoiding miscommunications. Written feedbacks should be brief and elaborate reasoning should be left for one-on-one discussion where the employee also must get the chance to put their side of thoughts. The closure of the discussion meeting should be on the points where issues were resolved and future aspects were discussed.
• While providing the feedback, be it positive or otherwise, back them with clear examples to the reference. 
• Finally, choose the words carefully and close the conversation on a positive note. 

Conclusion: Writing an effective performance review is the key to keep the employees motivated and encourages them to strive through higher achievements. Collaborating the reviews by the manager with HR can be done through an effective performance review management system like the cloud-based ultimate Kronos group which is a part of their workforce management cloud solution.

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