Are performance reviews really necessary for small and agile teams? As a startup leader or HR professional, you may be asking yourself this question. But the truth is, performance reviews can be an invaluable tool to evaluate employee performance and provide feedback that can propel your business to success.
What are the benefits of performance reviews?
Improved Communication
Performance reviews facilitate better communication between employees and employers. Regular feedback allows employees to understand their strengths and weaknesses, and managers can give feedback on improving their performance. This communication helps to build trust and improves the relationship between managers and direct reports.
Goal Setting
Performance reviews are an excellent opportunity to set and track progress towards goals. Employees can discuss their performance goals with their managers, and managers can provide feedback on how to achieve those goals. This ensures that goals align with the company’s objectives and increases the chances of both the business and employees succeeding.
Employee Development
Performance reviews can identify areas where employees need to improve their skills or knowledge. This information can be used to create an employee development plan that includes training and development opportunities. This helps improve the employee’s performance and increases their job satisfaction, motivation, focus on career progression and overall employee experience.
Workplace culture
Performance reviews help to ensure fairness and a culture of openness in the workplace. A consistent and transparent evaluation process ensures that all employees are treated fairly and equally. This can help to reduce workplace conflicts, improve morale and create a people-centric culture.
How to structure a performance review cycle
Define performance review forms and questions
A well-structured performance review form will consist of 360 feedback, which includes a self-evaluation, manager evaluation, peer evaluation and direct report evaluation. To get the insights you want it is important to ask the right questions. A few examples of questions to ask during a 360 review are:
Performance
- What would you say are this employee’s key strengths?
- What is one thing this employee should start doing?
- What is one thing this employee should stop doing?
- Share an example of a company value this person has brought to life during this performance cycle.
Development and growth
- What are your top three areas for improvement, and how do you plan to tackle them?
- What are your long-term career goals, and how do you plan to achieve them?
- What support do you require to develop and grow?
Set a review period
Set a clear time window for conducting performance review cycles to ensure employees have enough time to complete the reviews and managers to conduct appraisals. However, setting a time limit ensures review cycles stay on track.
Tips for Conducting an Effective Performance Appraisal
Managers conducting appraisals should have a well-structured plan before sitting down with direct reports to run through their appraisal. Here are some valuable tips:
- Be Prepared: Before the performance review, gather all the necessary information, such as the employee’s job description, performance metrics, and 360 feedback.
- Set an Agenda: Create a structured agenda for the performance review, including time for self-evaluation, feedback, and goal setting.
- Be Specific: Provide specific examples of the employee’s positive and negative performance. If you don’t provide examples, it’s easy for positive feedback to get lost and negative feedback to be misinterpreted or not fully understood.
- Listen: Listen to the employee’s feedback and concerns, and respond with empathy and understanding.
- Provide Constructive Feedback: Provide feedback that is constructive and actionable. Focus on how the employee can improve rather than just criticising their performance.
- Set Performance Goals: Set performance goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), such as OKRs. This will help the employee to stay motivated and focused.
How can Zelt help you with performance reviews?
We’ve introduced performance reviews to help people leaders gain powerful insights into their employees’ performance & engagement and empower their development with our new performance review app. Teams can now create 360 feedback forms, carry out review cycles and analyse the results all within Zelt. Moreover, our AI chatbot excels at generating powerful insights effortlessly. Simply ask and you shall receive.
Learn how you can manage performance reviews in Zelt today
Create customisable 360 feedback forms
Whether you need to create a monthly check-in or an annual performance review, with Zelt’s fully customisable forms you can create multiple sections and questions tailored to your needs.
Choose from a variety of response formats, including single-answer, multiple-answer, open-ended, and scale questions. Finally, select who should respond to the question.
Steps:
- Choose the name of your form, e.g. 2023 annual performance review
- Add sections to your form and choose who should answer the questions
- Create questions that you want to be answered in that section. There are multiple question types to choose from
Hassle-free cycle set-up
Select which employees to include in the cycle, who reviews them, how feedback is shared and send out invites in one quick step process.
Steps:
- Choose the name of your review cycle and select the form you want to use in the review cycle.
- Select a start date and end date for the review cycle.
- Choose which team members should be included in the review and select their direct report and peer reviewers.
- Choose whether you want specific reviews, e.g. peer reviews, to be anonymous or not for the employee.
- Trigger the review invites to your employees from within Zelt
- Wait for your teams to complete their reviews.
Gain actionable insights with in-depth results
Analyse results by reviewee, type (such as manager or peer reviews), and department. This level of detail allows managers to conduct effective feedback sessions with their direct reports, while also giving people leaders a bird’s-eye view of overall trends.
With Zelt, you’ll have access to the insights you need to identify areas for improvement and drive positive change across your organisation.