Performance Reviews – Top 5 Best Practices Appraising an employee’s performance is not just about analysing the strengths and weaknesses of an employee and giving him a hike in salary.
As a HR Manager, you need to ensure that the performance reviews have added real value to the employee’s growth and productivity. A good performance is review one where ideas, strategies, strengths, weaknesses, skill sets, improvements needed, achievements, attendance and punctuality, and almost everything related with an employee’s job is discussed! Some performance management best practices are:
- Self-Reviews: In this method ask an employee to rate his work on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the least and five being the maximum. This rating is done based on technical skills, non-technical skills, and other relevant competencies. By doing so, an employee can identify the areas where he needs training.
- Peer Reviews: In this method, divide employees into groups who can then assess each other’s performances based on certain given criteria. Remember that this method is just to determine the areas where an employee needs to improve. The percentage of salary hike may not be determined using this information.
- Manager Reviews: In this method, handover an appraisal or review form to the Manager and ask him to fill in the criteria relevant to his project or team members. Ask the Manager to discuss the contents of the form with the employee and record employee’s thoughts on the same.
- Upward performance assessments: In this method, handover review forms to all members in a team and ask them to assess the members who are their reportees or if they are the junior most, then they may assess the team members at the same level as theirs. Ask the senior manager to determine the parameters for assessment and then get the task completed.
- 360 degree Reviews: In this method, ask the manager to record comments about the performances of all his team members individually by including comments received from all the above. This would include comments by self, peers, manager’s own comments, comments from other personnel in the reporting structure, and finally, the customer as well!
In this form, record the subjective views of employee’s behaviour and motivation levels as well.
Once you collect the information using the above-mentioned methods, share this information with senior most members such as Vice President, CEO, and COO and get their comments as well. They may be able to identify certain talented employees for assigning prestigious projects or assignments. They may recommend promotions and in rare cases, terminations as well. Ensure that you file a copy of these assessments for future reference. As stated above, this information may or may not be used for salary appraisals.
References http://www.toolpack.com/performance.html
