Why You Need to Make Time for Employee Reviews

If your team is busy and accomplishing its goals, the last thing you want to do is disrupt the flow for an employee performance review meeting. But, if you put off performance reviews long enough you may find that your next meeting is triple the length, and your team member has many unattended problems to bring to your attention.

If this sounds familiar, you may be taking the wrong approach to performance management. Regular performance reviews are a key element of employer-employee communication, and have significant impacts on the engagement levels of your team – not to mention their performance.

Look at it this way: every minute you invest in performance management will be five minutes gained. That’s why encouraging strategic performance reviews during even busy times can be important for your team.

Why Performance Reviews Matter

It’s important to create a culture of performance management from day one. During onboarding, make sure employees understand that performance reviews are a core part of the job – not as a way to be overly critical, but instead as an opportunity to answer questions, provide constructive feedback, and ensure they are engaged and happy. Performance reviews can get a bad rep as terrifying, ultimatum laden meetings, and this fear should be alleviated from the start.

Instead, try adopting a few best practices so employees know when and what to expect from an employee performance review. Scheduling more regular performance reviews is often better for a busy team. While it may seem counter intuitive to plan more meetings than less, think of the productivity that can be proactively saved by targeting a minor problem before it becomes a huge issue. More frequent meetings may mean that your meetings can be shorter, as well, as you won’t have as much to review each time. 43% of highly engaged employees are receiving feedback once a week. Consider how these short, informal check-ins could work for your team.

As an employer or manager, it’s also your job to be prepared for performance management. Reviewing an employee’s file and performance in advance, having a good understanding of how their goals could align with company vision, and being upfront and clear during performance discussions will help meetings go smoothly and quickly. We have several other tips for conducting effective reviews, and these will help conserve everyone’s time.

Finally, the best way to promote efficient and effective performance management is to not do it alone. The BirdDogHR Performance Management Software completely automates the employee review process, helping with goal setting and tracking, real-time performance review, and more. The central, cloud-based solution will mean managers and HR teams don’t need to scramble for information last minute.

Set aside the dread that can come with performance management and reviews – when done regularly and right, they are an excellent way to improve employee engagement, target issues early, and sync expectations between team members and managers.