How to Give An Effective Performance Review – 12 vital tips to action
Learn how to give an effective performance review and you have a great tool to motivate and develop team members alongside giving them realistic feedback about their performance.
According to a Gallup survey just one in five employees agreed performance evaluations were motivational. Most team members see performance appraisals as time consuming, demotivational, biased and unfair. Make the performance review meetings you run a lot more useful and beneficial to team performance.
I was pretty nervous giving a performance review for the first time, particularly when I was given little advice and training on what to cover and more importantly how to cover it. The right preparation will dramatically reduce your apprehension about running a performance review.
How To Give an Effective Performance Review
- The preparation needed for great performance reviews
- Conducting the performance review – 6 agenda items to discuss
- How to follow up after the performance review – 3 key actions to take
If you have already conducted performance reviews, then get a lot more benefit for you and your team from the time spent preparing for and conducting performance evaluations.
Before we dive in, I want to cover what is the purpose of a performance review. I think a performance review should do two things very well:
- Provide an accurate, honest and useful evaluation of employee performance so they know exactly where they stand
- To provide a development framework to help that employee become better as quickly as possible
Feedback and development are both vital to motivate employees and give them the best chance to improve further. Every manager should be working to get the best from the team overall, so make development and improvement a key focus of employee evaluations.
Watch on YouTube
Listen on Podcast
To make the performance review accurate, honest and useful to the employee and be development focused let’s go through
The preparation needed for great performance reviews
In my opinion, an employee review should be a summary of all the feedback conversations you have already had during the year. There should be no surprises to either party when conducting a performance review.
For a great employee appraisal process, setting clear expectations and goals for each team member and the team overall are vital steps to do as early as possible.
If the employee doesn’t know and understand what is expected of them, how can you appraise their performance fairly and accurately? How can they judge if they are doing well or poorly?
Ensure that personal and team goals are communicated regularly and clearly, both verbally and in writing. Help each team member understands the activities and projects they need to do to achieve their personal goals. If they what to do and to do, they are much more likely to be successful.
Book in regular one-on-one meetings with each team member and provide them specific and actionable feedback and then help them improve.
Provide clear goals and expectations
When you have clear goals and expectations and when you are regularly providing feedback to your team members, the annual performance review meeting is just another meeting. You won’t be nervous, and your team members won’t be nervous about the performance review meeting either.
3 additional preparation steps I suggest you do prior to the performance review is:
- Book out plenty of time to personally review progress and performance against employee goals at least two weeks before the performance review. If you rush the preparation, it will show in the performance review. Lack of effort on your part is demotivational to the employee and they won’t listen to what you say.
- Write specific notes with examples to take into the performance review:
- What went really well – notable achievements; the great skills and behaviours they use and display; and how they have helped the team deliver results
- What they should focus on to become even better in doing their job – the skills, the knowledge and experience they need
- How they can gain these plus how you as a manager will help them – for example providing specific opportunities, projects, coaching etc
- What they are not as good at, the missed goals and how to do better next time
- Ask your peers, bosses, and team stakeholders for feedback on each individual in your team prior to the performance review. I find this really useful to get a more balanced view of the employee’s performance and to spot things I don’t get to see or might have missed.
At least a week before the performance review
I would speak to and/or email the employee and ask them to bring to the performance appraisal meeting – notes and examples of the 4 key areas being:
- What went really well?
- What they think they should focus on the become even better
- How they can gain the skills, knowledge, and experience to become better
- What they are not as good at, missed goals and how to do better next time
As you can see, most of the list is focused on the positives and development, not on the negatives.
Performance Appraisal Agenda
Before the employee appraisal meeting plan out the agenda for the review meeting. I suggest you have 6 key agenda items being:
- Intros and communicating the Agenda
- Ask the employee to talk through their performance
- Give your specific feedback on performance and invite discussion
- Talk through the employee’s career plans
- Discuss the employee development plan and the opportunities
- Jointly agreed the goals and actions for manager and employee
With a clear plan of how to run a performance review meeting you will feel a lot more confident about conducting a performance review meeting. The better your preparation, the easier conducting a performance review meeting will be.
Your preparation will be obvious and signals to your employee that you value them and want to help them become better. Who wouldn’t appreciate that!
Conducting the performance review meeting itself
During the performance review meetings it is very important to be honest and diplomatic. If you sugar coat your feedback, water it down, or are not clear, your feedback will lose a lot of its value to your employee. Providing you are diplomatic, considerate and aim to help them, being honest will not offend or damage your relationship.
Always book a private meeting room. I usually book out 2 hours, knowing that it will probably take less time. Rushing the discussion would be very demotivational to the team member.
Going through each agenda item for the performance review meeting:
1 – introductions and communicating the agenda for the performance appraisal
Allow a few minutes at the beginning of meeting for a bit of chit chat and small talk to help both of you relax at the start of the performance review.
Go through the agenda and ask if they want to make any changes. To set a positive tone for the meeting I usually state something like:
“I appreciate that this is a formal performance review meeting but I want to make the meeting useful to you and your career. I will not be talking about anything that we have not already covered in our one-on-one meetings. I really want to hear how you think you have done over the last six months, and how I can help with your development.”
I have found a positive approach from the start really helps the employee performance appraisal meeting be more relaxed and useful for both parties.
2 – Ask The Employee To Talk Through Their Performance
Ask the employee questions and listen carefully to what they tell you.
By asking the employee to give they a self- review of their performance, you get their throughs AND you also get a good insight into how self-aware they are and how honest they are with themselves.
To prompt them if they need it, you can ask:
- What do you think went really well over the last 6 or 12 months?
- What do you think you should focus on the become even better in your role?
- How best do you think you can gain the skills, knowledge, and experience you need to become even better?
- What didn’t go so well for you? What goals did you miss? What actions can you take so you do better next time?
When they have finished speaking, you can ask them to give a quick summary of their key points or do this for them.
3 – Give Them Your Specific Feedback
Now it is time to talk through your specific feedback. Focus more time on the points on your list they did not bring up. Make your feedback as specific as possible. Avoid general or high level comments where possible.
I have included an example of specific feedback in the description so do take a look at this.
Make your feedback fair and honest. If they have done a poor job tell them and explain why they are falling short of their peers. Then focus on what they can do to develop and improve.
Keep your language positive and focus on the positive actions they can take regardless of how well they are going.
When you have given your feedback, ask them to comment and provide examples where they disagree. Have a two way discussion and keep an open mind.
4 – Talk Through The Employee’s Career Plans During The Performance Appraisal
Before discussing the employee’s development actions, I think it is useful to talk through the employee’s career plans. What role do they want to do next? Where do they want to be in a year, two years etc.
Talk through what they need to do to get the next role they are targeting. Ask them for their views first and then add your comments. When they have a clear picture of what they need to work on, you can help them create a development plan.
5 – Discuss The Employee Development Plan And Their Opportunities
You might be putting together a development plan from scratch, or you might be updating a current development plan during the performance review.
The purpose focusing on development is to help your team member do the best job they can. This improves the team’s performance and helps progress your career as a manager. Everyone wins.
90%+ of employees want to do a good job. Things that stop them doing a good job include:
- Not knowing what is expected of them
- Not knowing how to achieve what is expected of them
- Not having the skills, confidence or experience to take the actions, steps and activities to deliver against what is expected of them.
By agreeing development actions you are giving them the next few steps for how to improve in the areas you are discussing.
Work out how you are going to help them achieve their goals. What opportunities can you give them to build their skills and experience? What mentoring and coaching can you provide them to help? Or do you need to get others to mentor and coach them?
Create or update tailored and specific development actions for each team member during the performance review.
6 – Jointly Agreed The Goals And Actions For Manager And Employee
The outcome of a performance review meeting is a set of goals and actions that you have jointly agreed and committed to achieving. The team member should have 3-5 key actions. You as the manager should have a number of actions to help them achieve those goals. Make sure the actions are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound.
Don’t finished the performance review meeting without jointly agreed actions.
After the performance review meeting is finished, a vitally important task is following up on the performance review meeting. Far too many managers miss the opportunity to help their team members get quicker results.
How to follow up after the performance review
I think you should include as a minimum these 3 actions:
- Send a summary of the key points from the performance review meeting and the actions agreed
- Book-in follow up one-on-one meetings. I would suggest once a week or one every other week for several months.
- Plan out how and when you are going to deliver on your actions to help the employee.
In many companies, you have a formal performance appraisal form to complete. Make the comments specific and focus on providing detailed bullet points for the actions. This makes taking the next steps for them as easy as possible.
Use your one on one meeting to teach, mentor and coach so the employees complete their actions from the performance review meeting as quickly as possible and as well as possible.
I have included in the description a link to 7 Ways to Use 1:1 Meetings to Develop Employees & Improve Performance which will help you get even more out of your one on one meetings.
A great way to encourage your team members to take action, is to deliver on what you have promised or agreed to. If you have delivered and helped them, they will feel obliged to take the actions they have agreed. A great use of social pressure to get them moving.
Keep reviewing progress against goals with each employee and tailor your follow up to keep them progressing in their development.
in summary
Learning how to give an effective performance review is so useful to motivate and develop your team’s confidence, skills, and ability to deliver. The better your team performs, the better your career as a manager will develop. Help your team to help yourself and your career.
To help you with how to run a performance review meeting, we have been through:
- The preparation needed for great performance reviews
- Conducting the performance review – 6 agenda items to discuss
- How to follow up after the performance review – 3 key actions to take
If you have any questions on “How to Give An Effective Performance Review – 12 vital tips to action”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
Performance appraisals have a big impact on team members. It make senses to use the performance review as positively as possible. Conduct a good, fair and effective performance review and your team members will be happy. Make the performance appraisal unfair, full of surprises or vague and your employees will not be happy.
Happy employees definitely perform better than unhappy ones. Do your best to make the performance reviews really useful to your team members