Ideally, performance reviews keep companies working like a well-oiled machine. But, simply remembering to do employee performance reviews and staying on top of them can become yet another task for HR administrators to add to their growing pile to juggle.
And if the company is disorganized when it comes to conducing these reviews, it can become more difficult to build an actual plan to improve employee performance and look ahead.
Existing practices typically lack efficiency, not just because they are manual, tedious and universally reviled, but because they are usually focused on a one-time look back far into the past—one year ago.
It’s hard to remember what happened a year ago, which means reviews can become biased to what happened last month—recency bias. This leads to reviews becoming a time of looking back—not treated as an opportunity to enhance employee performance for the future.
Issues with performance reviews
For employees, performance reviews can feel like a dreaded exam. Even worse, if managers forget to conduct the review or are late, it’s understandable why an employee would feel forgotten and undervalued.
There’s often no transparency on what will be covered, and that means employees have no idea what to expect and no clue what to prepare for.
Your organization wants to see something positive come from these reviews. You want managers to express clear goals or action plans so that employees know where to start to improve their performance. If there’s no set plan, the cycle just repeats itself.
For managers, performance reviews can feel like a hassle. Many look at it as a chore, not as a way to improve employee performance. You may feel like you lack the tools and processes to create positive change from the reviews.
Managers need to gather information for the reviews to be done well, which can be tedious. Finding previous reviews to analyze means searching through piles of paper and mountains of digital files.
It would be a relief to find a way to effectively look back on employee performance and look forward to a plan to enhance performance. For many in HR, this sounds like it’s administratively impossible.
Does that sound like you? The good news is there are steps you can take to turn this dream into a reality.
How you can make the administration process more effective
There are many simple but impactful steps to ensure your reviews are productive.
- Ensure managers own their role in the review process, with administrators’ support helping them conduct the best reviews.
- Use reviews to connect employees with the direction the company is going in, ensuring your goals are clear and aligned.
- Express the importance of using performance reviews as a way to improve employee performance, not just looking back but looking forward.
How Workzoom helps
Workzoom can enable you to overcome these common pains through goal setting, regular check-ins and updates, such as a monthly or quarterly reviews (instead of annually).
For employees, Workzoom automatically notifies them on what their next steps should be. You can use cascading goals from the top down including corporate wide goals and department goals to align employee objectives to ensure your team is looking forward.
With Workzoom, employees can easily access learning opportunities and more.
For managers using Workzoom, you can focus on performance enhancement by consolidating goal setting, reviews, training and compensation requests to one source, accessible within one system.
Workzoom helps remind managers and administrators that a team member's review is upcoming so they can gather all the required information from coworkers for a fair assessment.
Managers can view employee time and attendance or absenteeism as well as performance ratings and disciplinary action all in one place, taking a holistic lens to performance reviews. Workzoom’s solution also allows for full clarity on what employees are being reviewed on.
Administrators can easily set review cadence, attach assessment questionnaires, and automate not just performance reviews but all kinds of reviews, like probationary reviews.
Everyone with permission can see in real time the progress your team is making on achieving objectives and completing performance assessments. Workzoom stores a full dated history of all goal and performance activity, including all assessments, for every employee.
Workzoom provides managers clear insight to performance and goals at a team level, to ensure your corporation is always moving forward.
The old school way is annual, but with Workzoom you can review on your own time schedule, which could mean every 3 or 6 months, or whichever cadence you choose. Employers can make sure they are getting the most out of their people and employees can feel like they are connected and engaged while remaining accountable.
Ensure your company is putting their best foot forward by treating performance reviews as opportunities and tools to enhance employee performance for the future. Learn more about our all-in-one people management software by booking a free demo now!