How to succeed in your performance reviews
12 June 2014
Read by 2848 persons
For both the employee and the manager, the annual performance review is crucial. Yet, for cultural reasons or negligence, too many companies "miss" this meeting. So, how to prepare for it? And how to make it a real management and progress tool?
The performance review is a key meeting that closes one year and opens another. It's an opportunity for an employee and ultimately a company to restart on new bases. To avoid the most frequent trap of the performance review of the "trial" type, it is necessary to establish an adjustment between two partners eager to find positive solutions for the future and to set new objectives for success. The objective is therefore to evaluate the results, the skills, the quality of professional behaviors, the potential of a person in the function they occupy and to address training issues.
Setting prerequisites
To be able to conduct good individual performance reviews, you must ensure that, upstream, senior management has clearly defined strategic, operational, and departmental objectives. In other words, you cannot give meaning and direction to each individual if the whole does not have it. Human resources management must, for its part, set up a clear performance evaluation process and provide practical support for both the employee and the manager. These two points are a prerequisite for any preparation of an effective performance review.
Preparing your interview
As the "meeting leader", nothing should be neglected, neither in the preparation, nor in the process, nor in the "post-interview". For it to be satisfactory for each party, the approach must be based on a clearly established process upstream: who does what? What is the schedule to be respected? What information will be given? What decisions will be made?, etc. And not be considered as the ultimate management meeting of the year, but rather as one of the components of the piloting arsenal: the interview will be all the richer and more authentic as the manager has been able to free up time throughout the year to fully play their role as manager and coach.
This can be done, for example, through monthly activity reports that will allow the manager to base the annual review on concrete facts observed and noted throughout the year.
More than speaking: listening!
Contrary to popular belief, during a performance review, the manager should listen more than speak. This does not exclude being firm in their analyses. They should also not be the only one asking and answering questions. The performance review is above all a place of exchange and listening that must allow understanding. It is also essential to be positive in both the analysis of the past year and the year to come. To talk about the successes of the year, the strengths that made it possible, the possibilities for improvement to, based on the employee's proposals, develop an action plan.
Remuneration aspects? They can be addressed, but without definitively setting a salary increase. The manager and the HR manager both need to have an overall view of all employees to make a proposal to each. This subject can be delicate; it is preferable not to address it at the beginning of the interview.
Defining the training plan
Beyond the analysis of results, successes and difficulties of the past year, beyond the objectives of the coming year and development areas, the performance review is an opportunity to discuss the development and career orientation of the employee, including a training plan.
Before leaving, the manager must summarize and specify what will happen next, in terms of training, remuneration, etc. They must commit and keep their employees informed. The interview will be all the more profitable if the "master of ceremonies" is comfortable. But be careful, it is not because one has good interpersonal skills that one knows how to conduct a good interview. You need to have been trained, know how to listen, and delve into things. And it is important that the manager themselves are evaluated by their hierarchy on the quality of the performance reviews they conduct.
Philippe Montant
CEO of ReKrute
The performance review is a key meeting that closes one year and opens another. It's an opportunity for an employee and ultimately a company to restart on new bases. To avoid the most frequent trap of the performance review of the "trial" type, it is necessary to establish an adjustment between two partners eager to find positive solutions for the future and to set new objectives for success. The objective is therefore to evaluate the results, the skills, the quality of professional behaviors, the potential of a person in the function they occupy and to address training issues.
Setting prerequisites
To be able to conduct good individual performance reviews, you must ensure that, upstream, senior management has clearly defined strategic, operational, and departmental objectives. In other words, you cannot give meaning and direction to each individual if the whole does not have it. Human resources management must, for its part, set up a clear performance evaluation process and provide practical support for both the employee and the manager. These two points are a prerequisite for any preparation of an effective performance review.
Preparing your interview
As the "meeting leader", nothing should be neglected, neither in the preparation, nor in the process, nor in the "post-interview". For it to be satisfactory for each party, the approach must be based on a clearly established process upstream: who does what? What is the schedule to be respected? What information will be given? What decisions will be made?, etc. And not be considered as the ultimate management meeting of the year, but rather as one of the components of the piloting arsenal: the interview will be all the richer and more authentic as the manager has been able to free up time throughout the year to fully play their role as manager and coach.
This can be done, for example, through monthly activity reports that will allow the manager to base the annual review on concrete facts observed and noted throughout the year.
More than speaking: listening!
Contrary to popular belief, during a performance review, the manager should listen more than speak. This does not exclude being firm in their analyses. They should also not be the only one asking and answering questions. The performance review is above all a place of exchange and listening that must allow understanding. It is also essential to be positive in both the analysis of the past year and the year to come. To talk about the successes of the year, the strengths that made it possible, the possibilities for improvement to, based on the employee's proposals, develop an action plan.
Remuneration aspects? They can be addressed, but without definitively setting a salary increase. The manager and the HR manager both need to have an overall view of all employees to make a proposal to each. This subject can be delicate; it is preferable not to address it at the beginning of the interview.
Defining the training plan
Beyond the analysis of results, successes and difficulties of the past year, beyond the objectives of the coming year and development areas, the performance review is an opportunity to discuss the development and career orientation of the employee, including a training plan.
Before leaving, the manager must summarize and specify what will happen next, in terms of training, remuneration, etc. They must commit and keep their employees informed. The interview will be all the more profitable if the "master of ceremonies" is comfortable. But be careful, it is not because one has good interpersonal skills that one knows how to conduct a good interview. You need to have been trained, know how to listen, and delve into things. And it is important that the manager themselves are evaluated by their hierarchy on the quality of the performance reviews they conduct.
Philippe Montant
CEO of ReKrute
