How Both Sides Can Make the Process More Painless – While Still Absorbing Important Feedback 

Fall is in the air — and while that means changing leaves and football games to many people, to us HR people, it means one thing in particular:  employee performance review time. This time of year, full of a sense of push and pull from managers to employees, can be a daunting period that can leave people feeling stressed, frustrated and undervalued.  Of course, there are also conflicting opinions as to whether  the process is impactful or hurtful to employees.

But even if it is seen as a downer, annual performance reviews are used in the majority of businesses, and will continue to be used for the foreseeable future.  So, how do you successfully navigate it without losing part of who you are in the process?

Employee Navigation Know-How

Know What Your goals Are.  Think about this: you are responsible for knowing what you are responsible for.  That said, if you don’t have a leader who exhibits that trait of responsibility, and they haven’t sat down with you to collectively defined your goals, then create them yourself.  Set your own benchmarks.  It might not help you in your current role, but it could help you in your career down the road, if during an interview you can say, ‘I set a goal to improved productivity by 18% — and I surpassed it by 21%.”

Keep Track of Your Success.  The year is crammed full of activities with work and family, so you find yourself thinking, “How can I possibly track everything I have done?”  Write it down!  For example:

• • • If you aren’t the type of person to keep notes, then go back and look at your calendar: meetings are a great way to remind yourself of projects you have worked on, led, or to which you contributed ideas.
    • Also, review your task list in Outlook.
    • Lastly, if you flag emails, that is also a great way to identify how you have supported others.

Don’t Wait til the End of the Year to Ask for Feedback.  If you have ever been in management and worked with HR, then you have heard how important it is to document, document, document.  So send emails or meeting invites designed to specifically discuss your performance and your development.  If they cancel, so be it, but they can’t say you didn’t ask for feedback.

Be Open to Feedback.  One of the hardest thing for people to do is confront other people.  “Conflict avoidance” is the number one issue we see when managers don’t want to deliver any message other than what they think the employee wants to hear. So, if your manager is actually trying to confront his/her fears and talk to you, be open.  Listen.  Take it in. Then engage in a dialogue that will be beneficial for both of you.

Manager Navigation Know-How

Don’t Let This be the First Conversation.  Nothing can be more frustrating to employees then to hear nothing from their manager all year long, and then on review day to hear that they’re terrible.  An employee’s performance should never be a surprise.  There should be regular dialogue — and even mid-year or quarterly review sessions.

Know What their Goals Are.  As a manager, you own part of your employee’s success and failures.  Therefore, you should know your employees’ goals, aspirations and professional time line – how long they have been in their position, and what amount of time they  have to develop a new skillset.  You have an obligation to help them identify gaps in that skillset or performance that will prevent them from getting to their goals.  Once you both know those gaps, you can both identify opportunities to fill them, and build a stronger employee in the process.

Know What you Want to Say.  Having difficult conversations is one of the hardest things managers have to do.  Therefore, before you call the employee into the office, review what you want to say.  Jot down some bullet points, have resources available, and be prepared for the reaction. Try to  use the sandwich technique to “wrap” two positive statements around challenging feedback. It can make the employee more open to dialogue about how to improve their performance if they think you haven’t 100% given up on them.

Own your Comments.  As an HR professional, I have heard from countless number of employees around the performance review time things like, “My manager said that HR told me I couldn’t have a raise,” or “My manager told me that corporate doesn’t really understand everything I do —  so that’s why I’m only getting 2%.”  This is passing the buck. You are a manager because you showed the strength and intelligence to be in the role, and you are the face of the company.  Your job is to lead.  So as a leader, own your comments.  If the enterprise initiative is to give a 2% raise, then you not only own that statement, but you need to sell it.  Do you really think your employee thinks you lead only 364 days a year?

Lastly, if you find this all very stressful and want to move away from performance reviews — and you work at a company where that move is considered an option — there is a way out: regular, engaged dialogue.  For instance, if you hold regular calls with your employee on a frequent basis (i.e. one day a week) and that conversation is around their performance, their goals, and how they measure up with the company’s goals, then you don’t need an annual performance review.

Now, I’m not referencing a weekly sales call; that isn’t this type of conversation.  You would need to build a development plan that is a living document where actives and metrics are logged and updated by the employee at least once a month. That monthly update could then include a summary of the weekly conversations from the three weeks prior.

This type of process might actually improve overall communication between employees and managers too, so when the tough conversations have to happen no one is surprised. Whichever option you choose – formal or informal performance review – it is important that feedback is part of the regular dialogue at the office to ensure professional growth for individuals and managers.