October is the perfect time to ensure that your organization is ready to engage in the process of annual performance evaluations. This is because most organizations choose to complete annual performance reviews at the end of Q4 or right at the beginning of the new year. Since the holiday season is often a busy time of year for organizations, ensuring preparedness during the month of October is key.
To prepare for annual performance reviews, organizations need to ensure they do the following:
Establish a Clear Evaluation Process
It’s important to make sure that your organization's evaluation process is clearly outlined and established. This includes:
Determining your performance management philosophy. We recommend creating a culture of growth and impact through a Continuous Feedback Development Model
Solidifying what questions or evaluation items will be included in the review
Choosing a platform or system to document performance feedback
Gathering any forms or documents that will be used
Outlining the timeline that will be followed
Establishing clear connections between performance and policies, such as compensation planning
Prepare Managers
It’s important to make sure managers have everything they need in order to conduct performance reviews for their direct reports. This often includes supervisor training to make sure they understand the laws and requirements for being a compliant manager.
This may also include performance management training that is specific to your organization, giving an overview of the process and timelines, answering common questions, and sharing any information about how performance reviews are connected to other organizational decisions (such as compensation or promotions).
Prepare Employees
A great way to ensure employees are informed and prepared to engage in the annual review process is to offer employee information sessions. During these sessions, your organization should review the evaluation process and talk about timelines, provide support on how to complete the self-evaluation portion of the review, and answer any questions employees may have about annual performance reviews.
Hold Performance Meetings
When it's time to meet with employees, it's important that supervisors follow best practices for performance meetings. This includes:
Setting aside uninterrupted time to truly focus on the employee.
Starting on a positive note, such as outlining successes the employee has achieved during the year
Highlighting areas of alignment and misalignment between the self-review and manager evaluations and areas. This can lead to important discussions and revelations.
Delivering constructive feedback without beating around the bush. A great way for supervisors to do this is to phrase with “I” messages to help with receiving the feedback. Don’t be vague.
Remember that employees want feedback. For the most part, employees feel as if they don’t get enough feedback and that when they do it’s too vague. Feedback should be ongoing, so nothing in the evaluation should come as a surprise to the employee.
Close the Loop
Performance evaluations are only meaningful when they are tied to other things. An outstanding performance review doesn’t carry much weight when there are no ties to promotions, compensation, or other recognition. Likewise, a poor performance review that isn’t tied to an improvement plan carries little value for both the employee and your organization.
While it may feel as though there is plenty of time between now and the end of the year to get annual performance evaluations completed, the truth is that Q4 goes by quickly. Holidays often result in shortened work weeks or people not being available, as well as end of the year organization closures. Therefore, to ensure that your organization is completing evaluations in a timely manner, it’s important to begin the annual review process now.
If your organization needs some support with performance evaluations, reach out today to learn more about how Cause Capacity can provide support with every step of the process.
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