Best Practices - Keeping your Managers engaged in the review process

A common performance review pain-point for companies is keeping their managers engaged in the process. Engaged managers complete on-time, well thought-out and productive reviews for their employees which help keep employees engaged and growing in your company.

When this engagement is lacking, employees feel as if their managers don't care - because they aren't getting regular feedback, and the growth of your company suffers, because your employees are stagnant.

Since it's so important - what can we do to make sure our managers are engaged in the process? Find our top tips below!

Have short, purposeful form content

Your form content - from the competencies, to the coaching tips and rating scales, is all meant to spur conversation. Make sure that this content is relevant to your company, and the roles your team are evaluating on.

When you're deciding the best questions to ask, start with a draft from your HR team or leadership, and then let your managers review, to give suggestions. Make sure this review process has a deadline, so that you don't do iterations for too long. This allows the managers to have buy-in in the process and say in what questions to ask.

Stay mindful as well of the length of your forms. When a form is too long, your managers will continuously put off completing the task, as it feels too daunting. Additionally, make sure that none of the questions or items to fill out are repetitive.

A short and efficient form, tailored to your company's culture and this employee's role will be engaging for both the manager and employee to complete.

Pro tip: Not sure if the form feels too long? Have someone else on your HR team (who didn't write it) complete the form for a check on clarity and length.

Take notes year round

A common problem when filling out a review is recency bias. We tend to remember the events or tasks that happened most recently, which can make it difficult to give a comprehensive review for the full review period you're evaluating.

To combat that, encourage your managers and employees to take notes in Perform throughout the year. This allows them to jog their memory about things that have happened that may not be top of mind.

There are a number of advantages to utilizing the note-taking feature throughout the year:

Makes for deeper, more specific performance reviews: Notes give context to performance while supporting competency ratings and creating discussion points for conversations between managers and employees.
Brings more voices to the evaluation process: Employees higher up the reporting structure can leave notes, allowing for a department head or team lead to provide input.
Promotes ongoing feedback: Employees want to know how they’re performing and notes facilitate consistent feedback.
Reduces recency bias: Reviews too often focus on the employee’s most recent successes and failures but collecting notes throughout the evaluation cycle ensures everything is covered.
Reduces completion time: Relevant notes make completing an employee’s evaluation a breeze since much of the necessary information is already in Trakstar Perform.

It's also important to take notes on both opportunities and successes. Sometimes it becomes easy to take notes on one or the other - but for a truly balanced review, we need to remember to take notes on both.

You can additionally encourage communication year round with your employees through the use of engagement surveys. These can help companies and managers be on top of employee satisfaction before issues spill in to performance reviews.

Encourage setting aside meaningful time for conversation

We are all busy - and review time is no different. Encourage your managers (and employees, if you opt for self reviews) to block time in their schedule to complete their reviews.

This may mean providing a quiet space and computer access to your employees, if they don't regularly have this space. Make sure that they get this time while on the clock, instead of being expected to complete their reviews outside of working hours.

Leadership stressing the importance of reviews, and backing it up through the action of giving the managers and employees the time and space to complete them will help everyone feel their value.

During the review period, make sure there is also a process in place for managers and employees to review the feedback together, and set goals for the future. This is a great time to make sure expectations and reality are in line, and the employee knows the correct direction for their future growth.

Once you have decided on areas of growth, work together to write and set meaningful goals inside of Perform. This will help keep everyone on target between now and the next review session.

Train your managers for difficult performance conversations

Sometimes managers shy away from completing performance reviews because they know it will bring up a performance issue in one of their employees. Avoiding this doesn't make the issue go away - so it's best to train your managers to tackle these performance issues before they spill into the performance review itself.

Make sure that your managers know how to have these conversations throughout the year - because a performance review should never be the first time an employee hears that there is a mismatch in performance and expectations.

When you do suspect performance issues, it's best to get started on a performance improvement process (PIP) right away. If you think this is where things are going, make sure you:

Involve your HR team early in the process
Document the performance issues, and any conversations you have with the employee as they occur in Trakstar Perform's note feature. This is a great time to use private notes
Take action early - if you are starting to think "this employee may need to be on a PIP" - it is probably already time

Read more about best practices for PIPs here.

Consider spreading review dates throughout the year

Typically companies fall in to one of two buckets - they do their performance reviews once (or multiple times) a year, on a set date - or, they do them based on anniversary, based on when the employee started at the company.

If having performance reviews all happen at the same time each year is putting a crunch on your managers and productivity, consider using an anniversary date review, instead. This allows the reviews to be spread out throughout the year, instead of all clumped together at once.

This may also reduce a "collective anxiety" that occurs when everyone is going through a performance review at the same time, and allows for your managers to have more meaningful conversation - since they aren't spread as thin trying to have conversations with everyone in the same time period.

Make reviews collaborative

Lastly, make your reviews collaborative. The more voices you add to the review, the more well-rounded the feedback will be.

To do this, consider having the employee complete a self review, along with the manager's review. This lets you see how the employee ranks themself, keeps the conversation from being one-sided, and may open up some conversations regarding expectations.

Additionally, you can solicit reviews from other people who have worked with the employee (both inside and outside the organization) through 360 Reviews. This allows managers to request reviews from other people, to share their feedback on the employee - providing a valuable lens and voice to the conversation.

The more voices that are providing context to the employee's performance, the more accurate picture you'll receive.

And remember - constantly ask for feedback

Regardless of how many times your team has done reviews, there is always room for improvement. Poll your managers about what is working, and what isn't - and make updates to your forms before your next review cycle.