Employee Reviews
One of the more painful, most neglected and most beneficial activities for a company - the employee review process.
As a person who has worked at multiple companies and has given and received many reviews, I could give my thoughts just based on those experiences. But I have also implemented employee review processes at two companies and have dealt with updating those processes multiple times based on input from employees.
Below are some of my do's and don'ts concerning running employee review processes.
1) Probably the most obvious - senior management has to be committed to allowing everyone in the company time to perform the necessary steps of the review process (whatever those steps may be).
2) Everyone in the company should be involved in the process. (Note: you might even consider providing shortened reviews for part-time employees, ESPECIALLY part-time employees hoping to become full-time employees.)
3) I have been in companies where reviews are done on an employee's annual anniversary and other companies where there is a designated review period time. I am a strong proponent of the second choice (designated review period time for the whole company) if you have #1 above taken care of. (Note: If the whole company is doing reviews at the same time, depending on the length of the review period, make sure that you are aware of usual departmental crush times, i.e. sales possibly at the end of the month, finance/accounting possibly at mid-month getting last months financials out, operations/customer service possibly on Mondays/start of a month when call volumes/customer requests are the heaviest.)
4) In terms of the actual review document, I believe that, as much as possible, one generic document should be used for everyone (all departments, all levels) in the company. For the documents that I created, I had high-level company-wide goals (which all employees should be contributing to):
Impact on our customers
Impact on our people
Impact on our company
Impact on one's self
It is when the reviews are being filled out that customization to a specific department/level/person occurs.
It is also best if each of the detailed categories on which to be reviewed has a combination of a numerical ranking of performance (i.e. 1-5, Substantially Exceeds Expectations - Needs substantial improvement) and a written section for supporting evidence.
5) The performance process that we had at my two companies went through the following steps:
- Employees do a self-assessment review (1 week) that is given to their manager
- Managers do reviews on each employee (2 weeks) that is given to each direct report
- A meeting occurs (within the next week) where each area of the review is discussed, more time being spent on categories where the ranking differs and then focusing on the supporting evidence (metrics if possible).
- A consensus is reached, a signed review is sent to the HR dept
In our case, the whole review process took place over a month (usually mid-November to mid-December or mid-June to mid-July, slow periods).
6) Finally, going back to my discussion on metrics, the employee's past performance (and expected future roles and responsibilites) should clearly be tied into the compensation increase that they receive. And those increases should be consistent across the company (based on the rankings). NO ONE SHOULD RECEIVE MORE OR LESS IF THEY HAVE PERFORMED AT THE SAME LEVEL IN THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW.
A review process is a great time to commend employees that are doing well and helping employees that are not working up to their potential. BUT feedback should not only happen at this point. If managers are good in providing true feedback on a consistent basis then the actual review process will not be painful.
As a person who has worked at multiple companies and has given and received many reviews, I could give my thoughts just based on those experiences. But I have also implemented employee review processes at two companies and have dealt with updating those processes multiple times based on input from employees.
Below are some of my do's and don'ts concerning running employee review processes.
1) Probably the most obvious - senior management has to be committed to allowing everyone in the company time to perform the necessary steps of the review process (whatever those steps may be).
2) Everyone in the company should be involved in the process. (Note: you might even consider providing shortened reviews for part-time employees, ESPECIALLY part-time employees hoping to become full-time employees.)
3) I have been in companies where reviews are done on an employee's annual anniversary and other companies where there is a designated review period time. I am a strong proponent of the second choice (designated review period time for the whole company) if you have #1 above taken care of. (Note: If the whole company is doing reviews at the same time, depending on the length of the review period, make sure that you are aware of usual departmental crush times, i.e. sales possibly at the end of the month, finance/accounting possibly at mid-month getting last months financials out, operations/customer service possibly on Mondays/start of a month when call volumes/customer requests are the heaviest.)
4) In terms of the actual review document, I believe that, as much as possible, one generic document should be used for everyone (all departments, all levels) in the company. For the documents that I created, I had high-level company-wide goals (which all employees should be contributing to):
Impact on our customers
Impact on our people
Impact on our company
Impact on one's self
It is when the reviews are being filled out that customization to a specific department/level/person occurs.
It is also best if each of the detailed categories on which to be reviewed has a combination of a numerical ranking of performance (i.e. 1-5, Substantially Exceeds Expectations - Needs substantial improvement) and a written section for supporting evidence.
5) The performance process that we had at my two companies went through the following steps:
- Employees do a self-assessment review (1 week) that is given to their manager
- Managers do reviews on each employee (2 weeks) that is given to each direct report
- A meeting occurs (within the next week) where each area of the review is discussed, more time being spent on categories where the ranking differs and then focusing on the supporting evidence (metrics if possible).
- A consensus is reached, a signed review is sent to the HR dept
In our case, the whole review process took place over a month (usually mid-November to mid-December or mid-June to mid-July, slow periods).
6) Finally, going back to my discussion on metrics, the employee's past performance (and expected future roles and responsibilites) should clearly be tied into the compensation increase that they receive. And those increases should be consistent across the company (based on the rankings). NO ONE SHOULD RECEIVE MORE OR LESS IF THEY HAVE PERFORMED AT THE SAME LEVEL IN THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW.
A review process is a great time to commend employees that are doing well and helping employees that are not working up to their potential. BUT feedback should not only happen at this point. If managers are good in providing true feedback on a consistent basis then the actual review process will not be painful.
posted by John F Martin at 4:25 PM
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