The right performance management process for your organization depends in large part on what you want to accomplish with it. What you’re willing to invest in it matters too. Here are some principles to keep in mind when deciding on your policy and performing assessments:
- Performance reviews are often stressful and difficult. Employees don’t know how they’ll be evaluated. They’re worried they’ll be surprised with a bad review. But reviews shouldn’t be a surprise. If you give employees regular feedback on their performance and address poor performance when it happens, then the review becomes more of a reminder and summary of what employees are doing well. It also tells them where they have opportunities to improve.
- Setting clear performance expectations and holding employees accountable to them improves efficiency and productivity. It also improves morale. Conversations with an underperforming employee may be challenging. But allowing poor performance to continue unabated isn’t a viable plan. Coworkers whose work is affected by it can feel frustrated and resentful. Ignoring poor performance only compounds the problem.
- Employees are more likely to take ownership over their performance goals if they have a role in defining those goals.
- Connecting performance measures to company objectives and values can increase employees’ sense of purpose and engagement. It draws a direct correlation between their individual work and performance and your collective success as a company.
- It’s helpful to structure performance evaluation meetings and conversations around the specific expectations set in the job description to ensure that the discussion is directly applicable to that employee’s particular job duties.
- Documenting performance evaluations can help you justify pay increases, decreases, or other employment decisions like termination that could be challenged as discriminatory. It’s safest to terminate an employee when you have documentation that justifies the legitimate business reasons for the termination.
