Quite regularly, I am asked by Clients to help them with their performance review systems. Here are a few questions to consider that I generally regularly go through prior to starting:-

Confirm you why? Why do you want to introduce performance reviews?Is it to provide feedback, for goal setting purposes, for career development and/or for salary review purposes? Templates, proformas, preparation and timing can be quite different based around this.

How do your employees want to be assessed? While obviously, it is ultimately up to the employer to make a decision on this, asking your staff about programs/processes they have been through previously and liked/not liked is also a great place to start and achieve buy-in on the process.

What are you measuring their performance against? Are those standards clear and communicated regularly? Ie is this based around updated job descriptions, recently communicated KPI’s and/or clearly defined and lived values/behaviours etc?

Do you have a classification structure? Ie Do your staff know what their positions are, where they may sit in the market in relation to experience and salary benchmark?

Do you want to link your performance reviews to salary reviews? It is important that your position on this is clear with your staff ie if you have an annual salary review process generally based around CPI increases only, then employee’s salaries will only generally increase by more than that (if at all) if they apply for a new position and are successful. If you do not want to combine these discussions – then generally you would look to conduct these processes at different times.

Do your managers know how to have these discussions? Ie are they trained in giving and receiving feedback, do they know the leeway they have in relation to what they promise etc).

What other performance discussions do you have in place? Do employees have a good feel for where they are sitting in relation to their performance? Ie are they weekly/monthly performance meetings to ensure no surprises and a more effective, positive discussion.

 What kind of system would you like? Ie paper based, on line and/or mobile friendly.

Above are 8 pre-thinking things to think about when looking at your Performance Review/Development Process.

Need some help working through your internal HR processes and/or looking at what would be the best fit for your business? Dont hesitate to let us know….

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