How to Run a Kick A** Performance Review — Part Two

Hey there, welcome to our second blog on increasing your confidence in running an effective performance review. Now that you have the right intent (blog one), it’s time to consider what you, as an effective manager, need to do prior to conducting a review.

Here are our top tips on what to do in preparation for your performance reviews:

Set the date and set it early

Set a review time that is mutually convenient for both you and your employee and ensure it is set well in advance so that you both have a deadline to work towards. In addition, choose a space that is private and where you won’t be interrupted — your employee needs to know that they have your undivided attention. Your company may also ask your employees to conduct self-assessments and setting a review date with plenty of time gives your employee ample opportunity for self-reflection.

Gather your stats and facts

One of the hardest parts of preparing for a review is trying to remember everything that happened over the course of a year. When you don’t keep a record of employee performance and behaviours throughout the year, you may tend to base the review on recent memory. Ideally, you would have maintained documentation throughout the year so that you can conduct employee reviews based on evidence. However, if you are scrambling last minute to collect information try to be as far reaching and in depth as you can. Collect information on:

- Goals and KPIs

- Customer feedback

- Attendance

- Examples of good performance

- Examples of times when performance could have been improved.

At Everperform, we consider performance in terms of what should you start, stop and speed up. This method gives you concise measures and tasks to discuss with your employee and provides them with specific steps to take next.

Be aware of any self-biases and your mood

We recognise that performance reviews are hard — you are combining quantitative and qualitative measures, the weighting of which can be difficult to determine. In addition, comparing two individuals on different goals and tasks can be quite challenging. During this time, your brain can automatically resort to unconscious biases as a ‘coping mechanism’ to help you determine how to rank employees. Bias is a neurological underpinning and ‘shortcut’ that creeps into our lives everyday. Unconscious biases don’t mean that you are a bad person who judges people but it is critical to try to be aware of them so that you can help mitigate them from impacting your performance reviews. So here are some common cognitive biases that may impact the outcome of performance reviews:

Similarity Bias

Research has found that managers tend to give higher ratings to employees who are similar to them. It was found that people who had the same demographic and cultural background as well as the same working style were more likely to be ranked higher than those with different backgrounds and working styles.

Halo Effect

Studies show that well liked people in the office are more likely to be ranked higher. This means that you could be ranking on how well you like a particular employee and not on their performance. The halo effect may also come into play by rating employees based on previous performance review scores. Resorting to previous scores may seem appealing ,especially if you’re a new manager, however, it is important to focus predominantly on the time period since the last review was conducted.

Recency Error

This fun little bias can have a big impact on how you prepare for your performance reviews. If an employee has recently displayed either outstanding work or unsatisfactory work immediately prior to the evaluation, it can offset an entire year of performance by allowing one recent event to dictate the performance review. Again, you must focus on the time period since the last performance review.

Gender bias

Ahhh here’s one to ruffle a few feathers — either by the outcome of the study or by including it in this blog. But here it is… Women have the tendency to be rated lower in performance reviews than men. A study by Kieran Snyder looked at 248 reviews across 28 companies, and found that 88% of women’s performance reviews contained critical commentary compared to 59% of reviews conducted for men. In addition, many reviews were critical of women’s personalities and tone when compared to men. So… PLEASE… be aware of what you are choosing to base your performance reviews on and consider the gender differences. Before you make the decision to reprimand a woman for being too bossy consider how the discussion would go if the employee was a man. Further reading here

The final factor to be aware of when preparing for performance reviews is your mood. A negative mood has been shown to significantly impact the way employees are rated so make sure you don’t prepare for them when you’ve just had a heated debate with you superior or when your personal life has just blown up.

Get Feedback from others

My friend was recently an intern at a consulting group and before deciding to keep her on they sent out a quick survey to all team members whom she had worked with to get feedback on her performance. This is an excellent method of sidestepping your own cognitive bias’ and can boost morale among your pre-existing employees (shows them that you value their opinion). This can easily come into play at performance review time and can be done either informally or formally.

Focus on strengths

While traditionally, performance reviews focus on perceived weaknesses or areas of improvement, it’s often better to focus on strengths instead. Not everyone in your office needs to be great at everything and if an employee has nothing to do with public speaking and sucks at it, then maybe that’s perfectly ok. In contrast to focusing on improvement areas, focusing on strengths has been shown to boost employee performance and productivity.

Final Thoughts

The performance review should operate as a two-way flow of effective communication between you and your employee. Whilst it can be a nerve-racking time, you both actually want the same outcome — success and productivity within the organisation. So be prepared, be aware and run kick a** performance reviews. Stayed tuned on tips on what to do during your performance reviews next week.