NNFA Northwest Region

Painless Performance Reviews

    It's not unusual for managers to hate performance reviews. They are downright painful. Although many managers have developed convenient strategies for avoiding them, the truth is avoiding performance reviews is like ignoring a leak in a boat. It will eventually sink you.

    Performance reviews are as valuable to managers and employees as a navigation chart is to a ship's captain.They are a learning opportunity-a way to find out when things are off-course and what things are getting in the way. If done on a regular basis, reviews can stop small problems from becoming large ones. They also stop miscommunications, so the ship bound for Shanghai doesn't end up in Singapore.

    Many managers mistakenly see performance reviews as confrontational, or too personal. They think of the review as a time to praise employees for how great they are or to criticize them for what they've been doing wrong. Criticism and praise are forms of communication that are uncomfortable for many people and both focus directly on the other person. There is another way to approach performance reviews that removes this discomfort altogether.

    The simplest way to conduct painless performance reviews is to use the employee's job description as a primary review tool. If you read the article titled The Natural Manager you will remember that a good job description is outcome-oriented and is developed in coordination with the employee. When this is the case, the employee knows precisely what criteria will be used to measure his or her performance-the degree to which they achieved the outcomes. Just think about how much more comfortable it is talking about job outcomes than it would be to talk about the person.

    With an outcome-oriented job description in front of you, it will be easy for you and your employee to review it and have a discussion about each of the desired outcomes. Together you can determine whether or not the outcomes were reached and, if not, why? This process is far more objective than evaluations that require the manager to rate the employee using a standard series of subjective criteria. Evaluation criteria like "employee has a good attitude," "employee works hard" and "employee gets along with peers" are difficult to assess with any degree of objectivity.

    In addition to being more objective and less personal, outcome evaluations invite open dialogue and discovery. When manager and employee identify outcomes that were not met they have an opportunity to analyze the situation and look for ways to remove obstacles to job performance. Sometimes the learning is as valuable for the manager as it is for the employee. New perspectives on operations often arise from listening to the employee's view of the job. If job planning occurs prior to hiring employees, performance reviews should be a time when you, as manager, can reward yourself for a job well done.

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