Think about your last review. What thoughts came to mind? What went right? What went wrong? Couple of the stories I've heard, some horror stories and some good ones, unfortunately you hear mostly the bad ones, are employees that their review was mailed to them and had no dialogue. On was told that here's your review, I hope you like it. Another one said here's your review, you're not going to like it. The stories are many, many, many and unfortunately most of them are not positive. So what I want to talk about next is how to make it a more positive experience by having a process. After this video, you'll be able to understand in detail the recommended steps in a performance review. So, let's look at some steps you can follow to make sure that your process goes well. First, discuss the importance of the review process. I think this is critical. When an employee comes in sometimes they're a little nervous, they're not sure what's going to happen. They might be a new employee. Just let them know what, how the process works at our organization. Next, you want to explain the purpose of this particular meeting and again, this is meant to put the employee a little bit at ease. You'll talk about the steps we're going to take. You're going to talk about the outcomes. And again, it's a nice way to have a little bit of non-threatening dialogue before the meeting starts, but mainly put the employee at ease. Then you get into sort of the reason we're here. You're going to look at their past year, or whatever your review period is. And jointly discuss the goals and accomplishments with the rationale. I put rationale here for a critical reason. It's just not enough to say you achieve your goals and these were your accomplishments. I want to know the thought process behind why you said that, as a manager. This gives it much more credibility. So again, give the rational and reasoning it really will help motivate the employee. Your next step, will be end up folks on the future, so you have a discussion on the developmental goals and future goals and then discuss around that. Much like the first one, it should be done jointly. You want to have the agreed upon goals. One of my favorite quotes I heard from, I can't remember where, but it's a no involvement, no commitment. And I think that's crucial here. If you involve the employee in the process there's much more commitment toward the goals. Then you want to summarize. And actually a little tip here I often want to have the employee summarize what we talked about. Now you want to tell the employee ahead of time that you're going to have this so you don't embarrass them, but this will help check for understanding. Do they really understand the goals that we are talking about and were they involved in the process? The last basic step, is to set a follow up date. If your organization does these quarterly, set up for a quarterly date. If there's some critical issues you're working on, you might want to set it from a month from now. But depending on what your goals and discussions were, it's critical to have a follow-up date. This will ensure that the employee knows. That they will be held accountable for the issues we discussed. One of the things that you often here about reviews is basically, I have my review every year. We put it in a file, we dust it off, we talk about it a year later. Follow up dates will eliminate people thinking that this doesn't really matter a whole lot. What about money? You'll notice in my steps I said nothing about money. Money is certainly part of the overall reward process. But most people who are pure performance and management, aficionados if you will, say the review and the performance management should be about the development and growth. And keep that real clear with the employee. Now once that's done, you want to talk about rewards. That's important. Different people do it differently. Some people do it right during that meeting. Other people wait a week or two. My own personal preference, for what it's worth, I like to have it as a separate discussion later because it separates about the money from the development. But again, without the rewards you may see the development and motivation to perform go down. So money and rewards certainly are important. What do employees want? Let me tell you, I've talked to employees over the years. And here are the things that they say they want from the performance process. One, the clear expectations. We've said this a couple of times. Over and over again they want to know what is expected of me, and without clear expectations it's very difficult to perform well. I may do a great job on a project, but it wasn't what you expected of me. Give me the direction. A favorite quote was, it's like climbing the ladder of success, if I'm up against the wrong wall, it doesn't do me a lot of good. Clear expectations. Positive, constructive feedback on a regular basis, especially with millennials. Millennials love constant feedback. Give it them on a regular basis in both positive and constructive. We all like the positives, but the constructive is every bit as important to develop and grow my employees. Understand the evaluation criteria. In the education process, we have what we call rubrics. They are very clear definitions of how we will be evaluated. In the corporate world competencies and other methods are used. So, make sure that the employees truly understand what they're being evaluated on. Very motivating to know that. Involve in goal setting. I mentioned to you many times in my life involvement is the real crucial thing. To get people involved at any project, whether it be a performance management or cleaning the yard. Involvement and goal setting is very important. Accurate job descriptions. You may ask why are accurate job descriptions have to do with the performance review process. Employees want to know specifically, is this on my job description. Am I doing things outside my job description? They want to know what their accountabilities are the job description will do that. In fact, another tip for you. I often take the job description to the review, and review it with the employee to make sure it's still accurate. If their doing things that are not on there, I may want to contact HR and have them update the job descriptions. If they're not doing things that may be a performance issue. So the job descriptions which goes back to that clear expectations. Be treated fairly and consistently. This is crucial. Employees want fairness. If they are not being treated fairly, motivation goes down. And even if they're not going a good job but they're being treated fairly, they will usually respond well. But make sure we're consistent with all employees. One of the biggest complaints I have from employees over the years as a manager is managers ignore poor performance. Again it destroys some of the motivation. Sharing info and resources, this is crucial too. If I'm going to develop and grow I need the resources to do so. So if I know that I am working on a project and there's resources available to me. Maybe it's a computer resources, maybe it's a class, maybe it's a person in your organization who's a content expert. This is crucial to know that I have resources to help me be successful in my job. And there's nothing worse than finding out that, I went through all this work to finish my project and I could have had a content expert help me with the growth process. Again, back to that motivation. Job career enrichment opportunities. People want to grow in your organization. Employees talk about this all the time. I referred to millennials a few seconds ago. Millennials especially want to know what are my development opportunities? How can I grow? And the review process can outline that, how I can get there? A good development plan will tell me and my employee, how they're going to get to the next level they want to achieve. Really important for motivation. So these I've heard over the years what employees want from the performance review process and their managers like yourselves. We talked a little about goal setting. So, let's give a few tips on that here before we go too much farther. One is, you want to have an end in mind. What is the expectations and the goal? Clear expectations and goals are crucial. You also want to have a link to both the corporate strategy, corporate goals and the team goals. So, when you're setting the individual goals on your reviews, make sure it links to the larger goal. Otherwise, the employee does a really nice job, accomplishes a lot, but it doesn't add anything to the overall growth of the organization. And that's why we are in business. Another one is, to look at three to five. Three to five is a number I hear most often. Some go as little as three, some go as low as five, but this is my preference. It gives you enough goals where the employee feels they can actually accomplish it. Fewer tend to be too easy, more it tends to lose focus and we tend not to be able to really accomplish as much as we want because we're too scattered. Another one is achievable. This is one where you want it difficult enough where you have difficulty doing it but you don't want to be too easy. Sort of like the child story of the three bears. You want it to be just right where they feel challenged but not that I can never meet the goal. I worked at an organization once, where they were so strict on their goals, people didn't pay any attention to them because they knew no one ever achieved their goals because they were set so high. They became meaningless as a process. Another thing is you don't have to be a genius to do goal setting. Maybe you've heard the term smart goals before, and let me give you a little example of what they mean. S means specific goals. Specific goals, what is it exactly that I'm trying to achieve? M is measurable, if we can't measure them, how do we hold people accountable? So make sure your goals are measurable. A is attainable or achievable, can we achieve the goals? As mentioned a few seconds ago If I don't feel I can, I'm not likely to do it. Or if they're too easy, I'm not motivated by it. R is realistic. Realistic in the timetable, realistic in the goals. And the last one is T, is time bound. Make sure when you do your goals, they're time-bound. You just don't write a goal, Larry will achieve xyz this review period. Goals should be that by January 28, the following projects will be accomplished. Make it specific, make it a date, make it clear. That goes back to the accountability issue, hold people accountable and we have time bound goals they will know what's expected and when. Next is, want to do a quick review here about some of the things we've talked about and to help you sort of pull this all together. One is, when you're doing the review process. Prepare. So many people tend to wing it. I'll just, an hour before the review, I'll go in my computer, I'll take off last year's date put on this year's date, put a few new dates on there, maybe it's punched up and maybe they won't notice it's basically last year's review. Prepare. This is a very important discussion you're having about an employee's growth and future in the organization. Be specific. Don't inflate your ratings and your data. Tell people where they stand. If they don't know where they stand or if we constantly tell them they're better than they are, the motivation to prove is less. You really want to have people know where they stand and how they can get better. Present steps for improvement is not enough to tell me that how I'm doing and I need to get better in a certain area. Let me know the specific steps the and good reviews have some sort of development plan with those specific steps. Make sure you include that. Focus on future performance. While I like to talk about the review process, if you look backward over the year summarizing all the things that you've done. But really focus on the future, people have different percentage that they use on. Mine I sort of like the best is 70% should be on future performance because this is a development discussion as much as it is giving you some feedback on how you've done. But it's really about where we are going in the future. Reinforce desired behaviors. These can be the individual behaviors. Corporate behaviors. If you have a strong ethics policy, you need to be reinforcing the ethics that you want to see out of people. You want to, if you have a strong brand around customer service or innovation, you want to reinforce those behaviors so that they feed in to the corporate brand and mission. It also utilized input and ideas for buy in. This has been discussed a couple times as we've chatted here today. Utilize input for buy in, is where you get your commitment. We've heard some of my thoughts and some of other people's thoughts. Now let's hear from a few HR professionals about what they think. >> I think the biggest mistake that managers make is that sometimes it can be uncomfortable giving feedback that's not favorable and they don't know how to do that. And I think managers in general need to just be comfortable being uncomfortable, in terms of having conversations with employees that may not be as positive as would be ideal. >> I think the biggest mistakes managers most often make is lack of communication. And these type of surprise performance concerns that they might have, they give them at the end of the year right before they're getting their final review or a compensation increase. And I think it sucks for an awkward conversation with the employee and the manager. But it can also present problems as far as employees getting upset and taking action. A recent mistake or something that has come up is right before performance time, I'm telling us, okay, so these expectations are going to be what you're going to be appraised on, but it's a surprise. I don't think that should be a surprise. I think It should be an ongoing conversation about what you're being appraised on. Throughout the time that you're an employee so when it comes to performance appraisal time, you're not confused or surprised by what you're actually being focused on there.
