Communication, honesty, and openness are all key hallmarks of a happy and healthy workplace culture. As employers, it’s crucial that we strive to embody these values when we communicate and provide feedback to our employees. The ability to effectively engage with our employees and to provide them with personalized and constructive performance reviews has the power to do more than merely increase productivity in the office – it can also improve feelings of harmony and overall satisfaction in your workforce.
Here are six simple and effective employee performance review tips that can increase happiness and productivity within your workplace:
1. Outline the employee performance review process to your employees beforehand.
It can be a source of anxiety and confusion for employees if they aren’t aware of the process or timeline that they should anticipate for the review process. In order to make things run as smoothly as possible, you should always make an effort to be transparent with your employees about what they should expect from the evaluation process.
2. Seek multiple sources of input.
In order to avoid biases and misinformation, it’s important for employers to speak to multiple sources when they’re trying to gain a clear sense of an employee’s performance. To that end, we recommend setting plenty of time aside to speak with a number of teammates, managers, and colleagues who work closely with the employee who’s under review.
3. Don’t focus only on the negative.
Obviously, your evaluation should let an employee know if and where there’s any room for improvement. But that does not mean that the point of a performance review is to home in only on the negative aspects. It’s also crucial for employers to let their employees know the ways in which they’re demonstrating notable skills or aptitudes. In other words, you should always strive to balance negative with positive feedback.
4. Be prepared to back up your feedback with specific examples.
Employee performance reviews are only effective when they’re grounded firmly in reality. With that in mind, it’s important to do your homework prior to an employee review so that you’ll be able to back up your claims with concrete examples.
5. Make time for regular check-ins.
In order to be optimally effective for both employers and their employees, it’s important for the evaluation process to be ongoing and collaborative. Rather than aiming only for a single, annual performance review, managers should instead make it their goal to meet one-on-one with their employees at least three or four times per year.
6. Track the success of your employee reviews.
No employee review should end without first having established some practical goals for the future. The point of an employee evaluation, after all, is to figure out where there’s room for improvement and to chart a realistic course towards improvement. It should be a priority, therefore, for managers to build a strategy that will allow them to keep track of their employees’ progress down the road.
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At Salem Solutions, our goal is to help employers work towards happier, healthier workplaces. If you’re ready to learn more about what you can do to empower your team, contact us today!
