Research indicates a significant majority of employees express strong dissatisfaction with their organisation’s performance evaluations. Photo: hibob.com.
Roberta Matuson considers the inevitability of the annual performance review and suggests ways to reduce the stress it imposes on both employers and employees.
A manager once told me: “Your performance isn’t meeting my expectations, although I’m not sure I ever told you what they were.”
Yep – her exact words. I remember thinking: “Perhaps they taught Mind Reading 101 at her university, which wasn’t a course offered at mine.”
To say I left that meeting dazed and confused would be an understatement. At that very moment, I decided I needed to get as far away from this manager as I could, and left the organisation soon afterwards.
Over the years, dozens of people have shared similar stories with me regarding their performance reviews (or lack of them) and conversations their managers had with them about their performance.
Yet here we are, and it seems like little has changed in terms of performance management.
According to research from the Corporate Executive Board, a significant majority of employees (around 66 per cent) express strong dissatisfaction with their organisation’s performance evaluations.
Having been part of this club, and as a former head of human resources, I can attest to the fact there are ways to make performance conversations and the review process less stressful.
Here’s how HR leaders can help reduce stress all round when these performance conversations are due.
Turn manager monologues into dialogues: Many people in management find themselves suddenly in charge and are given little or no training. They treat their employees the same way they were treated, with no regard to whether they were treated well or poorly.
Take my former boss. Most likely, her previous bosses never took the time to tell her their expectations. As an experienced mind reader, she didn’t need to be told, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t need this information to succeed in my role.
Leadership training on effectively setting and communicating expectations could have been a lifesaver for our relationship. This kind of training should include role-playing what positive manager-employee conversations look like throughout the performance management process.
Continuous conversations, constant growth: Let’s face it – performance feedback that only pops up a few times a year is not very useful.
When you’re chatting regularly and everyone’s laying their cards on the table, that big annual review is just a recap of what you’ve been discussing all year.
Establish regular check-ins as part of your performance management process. When an employee and their boss know what’s coming in that yearly sit-down, it’s like the air gets let out of a big, stressful balloon. Everyone can breathe easier.
People actually talk about the real stuff. No more tiptoeing around, they dive right into what’s working and what’s not. It’s like opening the floodgates. Suddenly, both parties are sharing challenges, dreams, and where they want to go next.
Bosses and employees are no longer on opposite sides of the fence. They’re building solid relationships, which makes coming to work much better for everyone.
Most importantly, both parties no longer fear the next performance management conversation. Often, they look forward to it.
Goodbye spreadsheets, hello progress: I remember the days, and sometimes nights, where I’d spend hours with performance management spreadsheets. I would be running down late reviews, and sometimes even bribing people to get this task behind me.
Performance management doesn’t have to be a spreadsheet nightmare, nor does the process have to put additional stress on your managers.
More advanced tools can now automate review cycles, provide managers with review templates they can customise, send timely reminders and track progress effortlessly.
Teach your leaders to set clear expectations from day one; how to have effective performance management conversations, while leveraging the technology to automate the grunt work.
Then you can use this new-found time to focus on what really matters – developing your workforce.
Roberta Matuson is president of Matuson Consulting, which helps Fortune 500 companies and high-growth businesses create exceptional workplaces leading to extraordinary results. She can be contacted at [email protected]. This article first appeared on Roberta’s blogsite.
