ClearGears Blog

In the last post, I argued that the traditional review process doesn't work.  Not a shocker for most people.  Today, I'll present my solution for making performance reviews work successfully...and why they really are a good thing.

The Do's of Performance Reviews

1. Catch up to instant gratification.  We now live in a world of push notifications, micro-content, and constant connectivity.  The feedback loop we expect is milliseconds, not months.  Provide employees a way to access information on their performance whenever they want.  Have it up-to-date, and allow them to contribute by sharing thoughts, suggestions, and opinions.
    
2. Provide honest feedback.  Reviews are often clouded by "hr-speak" and a fear of legal retribution.  Legal retribution aside, employees need to understand in concrete terms what they're doing right and wrong.  "Met objectives" isn't terribly descriptive, and it doesn't help an employee improve.  Give them real examples of things that have just happened and what they can do better the next time around.
    
3. Start a revolution.  Honest, frequent performance reviews only work in organizations ready to embrace a cultural change (or awesome orgs who start out with this kind of culture).  Employees have to feel secure in sharing feedback about colleagues and their own satisfaction.  Managers have to be comfortable engaging in sometimes-difficult conversations with employees about performance, as it happens.  Executives have to trust employees not to try to game the system when they're evaluating colleagues.  The end game?  A culture where sharing, learning, and growing are more valued than half-truths, ass-covering, and a fear of rocking the boat.

Now that you've collected the data and single-handedly revolutionized your company culture, how do you actually conduct a performance review successfully?

Introducing Performance Check-Ins, the Younger, Sexier Cousin of Performance Reviews!

Performance evaluations should be happening continuously, but as we discussed before, this is often just a dream.  With a solution that collects regular data and puts information in employees' hands, full-on reviews are less necessary.  Instead, let's imagine a world of performance check-ins. 

Said check-ins happen every couple of weeks - no more infrequently than every couple of months.  They are informal, one-on-one meetings between manager and employee.  They answer 4 questions:

  1. How have I been performing since the last check-in?
  2. How has my satisfaction level changed since the last check-in?
  3. What will I work on between this check-in and the next?
  4. What impediments do I have to reaching those goals?

Sound familiar?  This methodology is catching on for a reason...

The data for these check-ins come from a system that collects continuous feedback on the employee's performance.  The employee walks into the check-in armed with data and prepared to ask the manager their thoughts about certain ratings.  The employee also has time for introspection and can brainstorm a plan for improvement to be presented to the manager.

There's no fear, because both sides have exactly the same data.  Suddenly, managers become mentors and partners in achieving goals, instead of scary authorities.  Stress levels go down.  Productivity goes up.  Happiness goes up.  World peace goes up.  (We can dream, right?)

The Kicker of It All? 

When you have frequent, informal meetings like this, there is no need for a formal, once-yearly review.  Employees don't need it, because they've gotten feedback throughout the year.  Managers don't need it because data has been collected throughout the year and is right there in front of them when they need to make personnel decisions and salary adjustments.

There are some who say that performance reviews should be canceled altogether.  We say they should be overhauled, rebranded, and made to actually work.

Performance evaluation and monitoring should be happening all the time, but let's be honest.  Without a scheduled time on the calendar, sometimes these conversations get pushed down the priority list.  Does that make someone a bad manager?  Probably not.  It just makes them busy.

So let's take a practical look at where we are today.  In the next post, we'll talk about how to revive the review process.

The Traditional Review Process Doesn't Work

People hate performance reviews.  And honestly, they have a reason to.  The process doesn't work for a number of reasons:

1. There's too much work for managers.  Completing comprehensive evaluations on all employees within a span of a couple of weeks is daunting, repetitive, and massively time-consuming.  "Soul-deadening" is an adjective that comes to mind.  By the 5th review, most managers have stopped putting their most thoughtful responses down and are simply focusing on getting them all done by the deadline. 
    
2. No one can remember details from 6 months ago.  No, really.  There's research on this.  We don't remember very well what happens in the middle of a series of events.  The beginning and end, yes, but the middle, not so much.  With performance review cycles, there's usually not a clearly-defined "beginning" that is markedly different than any other day of the week.  That leaves us remembering only the end.  A review that covers 12 months but really only pulls data from the last 5 weeks isn't fair, just, or useful.
    
3. Employees receive feedback out of context.  To encourage good behaviors and develop positive traits, managers need to give consistent feedback when they see a behavior occurring, not 3 months from then.  This creates an association in the employee's mind around the behavior and helps them process the feedback appropriately.  Referencing behavior from a meeting/presentation/company dinner from several months ago may elicit this response: "What meeting/presentation/company dinner?"  How likely is the feedback to stick when the employee can't even remember the event you're talking about? In the event that they do remember the event, their immediate response will be, "Why are you bringing this up now?"
    
4. Employees get an unfair amount of feedback all at once.  Waiting to share feedback with an employee until the end of the year means that they are overwhelmed with both the things they do well and what they do poorly.  The majority of this feedback will go right out the other ear, with only a little of it sticking.  That means that all the painstaking time invested by managers was mostly useless.  Good to know, huh?

But wait!  There is hope!  In the next post, we'll dig into what we can do to change the process and make it actually work.

There are some who say that performance reviews should be canceled altogether.  We say they should be overhauled, rebranded, and made to actually work.

Performance evaluation and monitoring should be happening all the time, but let's be honest.  Without a scheduled time on the calendar, sometimes these conversations get pushed down the priority list.  Does that make someone a bad manager?  Probably not.  It just makes them busy.

So let's take a practical look at where we are today.  In the next post, we'll talk about how to revive the review process.

The Traditional Review Process Doesn't Work

People hate performance reviews.  And honestly, they have a reason to.  The process doesn't work for a number of reasons:

1. There's too much work for managers.  Completing comprehensive evaluations on all employees within a span of a couple of weeks is daunting, repetitive, and massively time-consuming.  "Soul-deadening" is an adjective that comes to mind.  By the 5th review, most managers have stopped putting their most thoughtful responses down and are simply focusing on getting them all done by the deadline. 
    
2. No one can remember details from 6 months ago.  No, really.  There's research on this.  We don't remember very well what happens in the middle of a series of events.  The beginning and end, yes, but the middle, not so much.  With performance review cycles, there's usually not a clearly-defined "beginning" that is markedly different than any other day of the week.  That leaves us remembering only the end.  A review that covers 12 months but really only pulls data from the last 5 weeks isn't fair, just, or useful.
    
3. Employees receive feedback out of context.  To encourage good behaviors and develop positive traits, managers need to give consistent feedback when they see a behavior occurring, not 3 months from then.  This creates an association in the employee's mind around the behavior and helps them process the feedback appropriately.  Referencing behavior from a meeting/presentation/company dinner from several months ago may elicit this response: "What meeting/presentation/company dinner?"  How likely is the feedback to stick when the employee can't even remember the event you're talking about? In the event that they do remember the event, their immediate response will be, "Why are you bringing this up now?"
    
4. Employees get an unfair amount of feedback all at once.  Waiting to share feedback with an employee until the end of the year means that they are overwhelmed with both the things they do well and what they do poorly.  The majority of this feedback will go right out the other ear, with only a little of it sticking.  That means that all the painstaking time invested by managers was mostly useless.  Good to know, huh?

But wait!  There is hope!  In the next post, we'll dig into what we can do to change the process and make it actually work.

Performance reviews are designed to highlight weaknesses, right?  What if we used them to find strengths and capitalize on those?  360 degree reviews can be enlightening about an employee's strengths as well as their weaknesses.  Think about questions like "What is this person's greatest strength?" or "What is the best quality this person brings to the team?"

By focusing on strengths, managers unlock employee potential, encourage honest feedback, and challenge the perception that all feedback is negative.  These are three huge gains in any organization, and the cost of achieving them is shockingly low.  Read on to learn how to identify strengths and what to do with the information.

Focus on Strengths

Gallup has shown that employees whose managers focused on developing their strengths were:

• more engaged - their chances of being actively disengaged are only 1 in 100!
• more loyal - they both plan on staying in the company longer and are more likely to recommend the company's products or services
• more productive - engaged workers are more productive, creative, and innovative in their companies

Research overwhelmingly supports the idea that when we use our strengths at work, we are happier, more productive, and more likely to stick around.  This isn't to say, however, that we forget about weaknesses.  Instead, it means that we set goals for improving those weaknesses while also putting time and energy into developing and fostering already-existing strengths.

Identifying Strengths through Feedback

Your employees probably have a decent idea already of their strengths, but they've likely never thought about how to capitalize on those to do their jobs better or be happier.  This is where feedback comes in.  Invite employees to evaluate their own strengths, and then compare those answers with what the employee's colleagues believe are their strengths. 

So I'm a good communicator.  So what?  How is that going to help me in my job?  Identifying concrete ways to apply those strenghts is the next step.

Focus questions around tangible things the person can do to employ those strengths.  For example, "What next action could this person take to use their biggest strength on the job?" and "How can this person's strengths help you do your job better?"

Questions like these are a fantastic jumping off point for personal reflection, goal setting, and conversations between managers and employees.  By using feedback to collect positive information on an employee, rather than identifying their biggest weaknesses, managers and organizations go a long way to changing the opinion of feedback and evaluations among their workforce.

Using Strengths Feedback in the Workplace

Once you've identified a team's collective and individual strengths, what do you do with that information?  Look for ways to engage employees in what they do best.

When forming a new team, choose a leader that can drive clarity, get people excited, and move toward action.  When you notice an employee having a difficult time, reach out to a trusted colleague who is especially skilled at building relationships and empathizing with others.  When pairing employees for a task, look for people who will push each other because of their different talents and strengths.  If an employee has identified a strength they wish to continue developing, look for training classes or projects that specifically call for that kind of individual.

Additionally, recognize and celebrate employees' strengths.  Strive to create a culture of acceptance by acknowledging publicly that different people have different strengths, and that's ok.  In every organization, there is a need for big-picture thinkers as well as detail-oriented, micro-focused individuals.  Let go of the cookie-cutter mindset and see what your employees can achieve.

Employers already know the correlations between happiness at work and employee productivity.  Not only is it well documented, it's become part of mainstream thought on management.  The reasons so many organizations are getting it wrong is the topic of another post.  What we focus on today, though, is the correlation between happiness at work and employee health.

Happiness in life leads to greater job satisfaction, according to the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.  This study doesn't show as strong a positive correlation between job satisfaction and happiness in life.  Other research shows that employees who are really happy in their work are 180% happier in life overall and have 180% more energy.

Gallup's monthly Well-Being Index tracks trends in work environment, life evaluation, physical health, and several other criteria.  Americans' overall well-being has increased consistently from the depths of the economic recession, but job satisfaction levels are consistently, significantly lower than other criteria measured.

 
The work environment index has stayed steady around 48 since the beginning of the year, trailing behind most other indexes.

 

What's the importance of the impact of job satisfaction on overall well-being?  One of the main measures of well-being is physical health, and some shocking studies show that 30% of cases of heart disease were impacted by work environment, even after controlling for external factors like heredity.

Workplace stress may literally be killing your employees.

So what can you do about it?

Measure Twice, Cut Once

The first step to reducing stress and improving employee happiness at work is to measure what's going wrong.  Implement a means of gathering feedback that lets employees share thoughts, complaints, and suggestions in an anonymous way.  

Before inviting employee participation, management has to commit to honestly listening to feedback and implementing change where appropriate.  Once done, communication around the initiative is essential so employees know what they're participating in and why.

Begin at the Top

Want good low-level managers?  Start at the top.  There's a cascade effect among management indicating that excellent senior-level managers develop excellent middle- and low-level managers.  Executives set the culture, priorities, vision, and initiatives company-wide.  If executives place an emphasis on communication, honesty, and valuing employees over policies, direct managers know how to respond to daily stressors.

Increase Participation

Happy employees are ones who know where they stand in the company and feel valued.  They have the resources to do their jobs and they're allowed to work on things they're interested in.  Encourage employee participation in these ways:

• Communicate - communicate changes, initiatives, policies, and any other events that affect employees on a personal level.  Ask for feedback.  Listen.

• Develop strengths - take time to discover with employees where their strengths lie, and devise a strategy to engage those strengths.  Let employees do what they're good at, and they can become great.

• Treat employees like humans - Stop to recognize the moments in life that make us human.  Celebrate marriages, births, retirements, and holidays.  Provide support and flexibility when illness, death, or other tragedies strike.  Take care of your employees and they will take care of the company.

• Recognize success - quick, informal positive feedback on a job well done is one of the biggest ways to encourage employees and improve happiness.  Managers can send a short, private note to the employee or pull them aside after noticing good performance.  Then, they can publicly recognize the employee in a company meeting, by including senior managers on a congratulatory email, or by nominating the employee for an award.

How much stress do you have at work?  What simple things could your employer do to make your job better?  As a manager, how do you spot stressed-out employees and how are you empowered to help their situation?

Welcome to ClearGears! We're so excited that ClearGears has become a reality, and we want to introduce you to the people behind the idea. Who We Are We are a group of software and design experts spread across 4 countries - USA, Mexico, Pakistan, and India. We collaborate virtually and laugh at each other's mistakes in English. We love what we do and consider ourselves a family.

It's always hard to spend money on internal tools. Budgets are especially tight, but performance review tools ARE worth the money, if there is organizational support backing their implementation. If managers show a commitment to employees, employees are more likely to stick around and be more productive on the job. Here's why it should matter to you: