Year-End-Reviews | Season 2 episode 3 | Richard Brereton

Navigating Performance Management

In this episode, Roly is joined by Richard Brereton, Appraisd Customer Success Lead, discussing the divisive theme of year-end reviews or annual appraisals.

Although most organisations are now sold on a continuous approach to performance management, many organisations still see relevance in conducting an annual review. Looking back, reflecting, and making plans for the future.

But how can HR run this process smoothly in a notoriously busy time of year? Can HR speed up and streamline its annual review process while ensuring efficacy?

Key Takeaways:

• If timeframes are tight, start as soon as possible: Give enough time for people to complete their reviews, leaving it last minute might result in an oversight from managers who will want to wrap them up quickly, instead of taking the time to do it properly
• Ensure you are communicating, and supporting managers to complete their year-en-reviews: Communicate review windows with your managers and employees, so they can organise their workload accordingly. Ensure that your process includes support for new managers through guidance, documentation, or even tips that help managers have effective discussions.
• Get feedback from managers and employees on what is valuable: Ensure your performance management process is valuable for the organisation as well as for the employees. Collect opinions and feedback on the process from a wide spectrum of employees to get a clear picture of what is, and what isn’t, valuable. Tweak the process as needed for the next round of reviews.
• Setting a process online for the first time doesn’t need to be daunting: Getting your performance management process online doesn’t need to be an elaborate, time-consuming task. Instead, keep it simple and iterate as you go. Start with a simple review form to get people used to having conversations and documenting them online and look to expand on your process as you gather more information and feedback. ‍
• Communicate your overall business objectives and strategy to your employees: By doing so you can ensure that managers and employees can set team or individual objectives that link to the wider company goals. Ensure this is done promptly, so you don’t delay people setting their objectives.

Conclusion:

To ensure “smooth sailing” of your year-end-reviews communication is key. Communicating promptly gives time for people to organise their workload; Offering support such as guidance and prompts can aid new managers in having effective conversations with their employees; And informing managers and employees of business objectives ahead of time will alow them to plan their next year’s objectives in line with the organisation’s goals.

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