Common Mistakes in Your Performance Review Cycle

You've spent months of blood, sweat, and tears meeting your goals to increase the profitability of their team. The performance review everyone was waiting for arrives, and rather than feeling valued and motivated when they are over you feel misunderstood and undervalued. It seems that you are not alone — this happens more frequently than a normal person could expect, and by extension implies the whole general public of performance reviews is kind-of broken. What's to blame? Common mistakes that can derail the entire process, leading employees to disengage and companies to find it difficult improving.

A performance review packs a big punch in terms of growth, alignment and motivation. On the other hand, if not conducted properly they could have a more disastrous effect than helpful. Well in this blog, we will discuss the mistakes which are most common while conducting performance reviews. And we'll cover how to keep away from these mistakes so your reviews become more than just a 5 minute check-box but actually, help people succeed.

Mistake 1: Not Being Prepared

The key mistake the managers make is they do not Prepare themselves for Performance Reviews. This is what ultimately leads to the fluffy feedback you typically hear when in a review. You should know by now that if both parties aren't ready for and on-board with transparent discussion, then it comes off as condescending or superficial at best. It also means it could cost you opportunities to have critical conversations.

How to Avoid: Look at an employee´s work of the entire review period Take information from different sources, self-reviews, feedbacks of the coworkers and work results. This work serves as the foundation that keeps the review factual and paints a complete picture of what this employee has accomplished or achieved.

Mistake 2: Giving Projects From Only The Last Year

With reviews, it is very tempting to suck into only thinking about recent work. This is a common problem of recency bias where the employee's successes and challenges from earlier in the review period are left out, making for an incomplete evaluation.

Preventive Tip: Keep detailed performance records on your employees all year long. Managers should be encouraged to quickly jot down big wins and opportunities for improvement as they take place. This allows the review to reflect a true picture of an employee's prior performance, not just their most recent actions.

Mistake 3: Weakness Weighting

In addition, although weaknesses provide areas for growth and improvement, it is also important to remember that an over-emphasis on what is wrong can really dishearten employees. When a review focuses solely on what an employee did wrong, not only can it be seen as mainly negative experience compared to their strengths and successes.

What to Do Instead: Provide a balanced feedback by you combining things that are strong and lack of the same. Consider the review as an opportunity to commend on good work with a constructive take addressing ongoing struggles. An effective review should motivate employees to capitalize their strengths and overcome the challenges within them.

PeopleHum's 360 degree feedback tool enables managers to gain detailed employee feedback from colleagues, team members and self-assessments. Making sure feedback is constructive and unbiased, including discussing strengths as well as opportunities for improvement

Mistake 4 :Vague and Broad Comments

Wider comments such as "You are doing great" or, "You need to improve more" do not assist employees much. Staff members do not know what to improve or how they are doing without tangible examples and practical advice.

Get Around It: Give Specific Real-World Feedback For example, rather than saying “Your communication skills are lacking,” call out (with examples) instances where better communication might have been key and define clear steps on how they could be improved. This feedback can be particulate and help employees course correct.

Mistake 5: Not Hearing Out Employee Feedback

Let there be a continuous two way communication rather then one at all the performance appraisals. If you do not hear them then they feel ignored and disinterested in which all employees would be less of a help with the review.

What to Do Instead: Make sure that employees participate in their reviews. Encourage them to reflect upon their own practice and share the learnings, achievements as well raise any concerns or ideas they have. This approach instills a sense of teamwork that empowers employees to be part social updates of the solution for how they can improve in their roles.

Mistake 6: Infrequent review

One of the biggest mistake to miss out on those opportunity is by conducting performance reviews only once in a year. With out routine catch-ups, employees may battle to comply up with their goals and what is expected in them.

What to Do About It: Conduct periodic, real-time performance check-ins; create Range with regular end-of-year reviews at work. You can perform this either quarterly, or you may even do it every month. Providing continuous feedback and allows for along the way adjustments. Horses do not lie or they would be terrible poker players! Ongoing Reviews: This keeps the employees engaged and in sync with company objectives.

Mistake 7: Lack of Follow-Up

The performance review process cannot end when the meeting is over. That if you do not continue with what it was spoken, then everything will stay that way. You may notice no movement on those things you claimed were slack.

Avoid It By: During the review, establish next steps and schedule a follow-up to track results. This is a way to keep things moving and make sure feedback leads to actual changes.

Conclusion:

It really is true that performance reviews make a difference to engagement, development and how much everyone in the organization focuses on what needs doing. They offer an opportunity to improve. But by falling into common traps, they can become diluted and disconnected from the ground floor workers who fault through a lack of action.

Avoid these common mistakes that can turn your performance review cycle into just a series of tasks. Plan ahead, provide constructive criticism (both positive and negative), get feedback from your employees… keep in touch regularly….. Keep following up. This is how you transform your reviews into a powerful building and growth tool.

Ready to step up your performance reviews? Try peopleHum today to use our human resouce software platform and build an efficient, engaging review process that focuses on growth.

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