Constructive feedback is a number one tool for employee’s professional development, yet most employees are appalled with just the thought of their supervisors giving them performance reviews. In fact, a survey conducted on 1000 millennials found that 22 percent of employees choose to call in sick to avoid facing a performance review. But why? The main reason lies in the effort companies put into performance appraisal. Around 40 percent of employees felt the feedback they received was too vague, and it didn’t allow them to give their opinion on their work.
In order to understand how to give a proper review, we’ll discuss its benefits and execution.
Advantages of Performance Appraisal
Finding Room For Improvement
Every employee is on a development journey, and measuring performance helps in pinpointing things that can be improved. A study conducted by Science Direct taught us that employee performance evaluated against their past performance is perceived as fairer than one against their colleagues’ performance. This way you’re showing them you’re paying attention to their individual contribution to the company.
Performance evaluation helps you to identify employees’ opportunities for development. Proceed with caution when addressing this, in order for your intentions to be understood properly.
Employee Motivation
A good performance appraisal leads to better employee engagement. They feel more passionate and involved in the whole work process. Engaged employees are enthusiastic business supporters. They are more likely to give you feedback and innovative ideas to boost your company’s performance. They like engaging in a two-way conversation about, for example, cost reduction of certain projects.
Harmonizing Goals
With a regular performance review, you can often check on goal progression, which allows you to adapt those goals to reflect your employees’ competence. These goals should be relevant to both employee’s job descriptions and company’s strategy.
The best way to do this is to use a SMART objective. This is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-oriented. An achievable goal has to fulfill all of these criteria.
Gain Insight Into Being a Better Boss
A proper performance appraisal should go in two directions. Just as well as you’re giving your employees advice on improving their performance, they should give you the same. Don’t fret from asking them what you can improve in order to be a good leader.
How To Create a Proper Employee Appraisal?
Use a Fitting Time Management Software
Think about what kind of information you need to create an evaluation. Employees’ clock-ins and outs? A number of projects finished? Overtime? Traditionally, keeping track of all of this was pretty time consuming, and it involved more people working on these reviews. Luckily, today, all of this can easily be tracked by an employee time tracking software like the one from WorkPuls.
Use a timekeeping software to check on your employee’s work, by gaining an insight into projects and tasks they’re assigned on and time spent on them. Numbers are your best friends, as you’ll use them to see if a certain task takes up too much time, and redistribute assigned employees accordingly.
Clock tracker is also helpful to keep track of employee hours spent in the office, which is usually measured by their first and last mouse movement and keystroke during work hours. Time clock app also measures time spent working overtime, and with certain improvements on the law field concerning hour tracking system, this is also something you might have to measure.
Create a Transparent Environment
This means explaining the whole evaluation measurement process to your employees. Tell them what is being measured and how, and back it up with examples. The fear of evaluation is mostly based on fear of the unknown, so removing this element will lead to better understanding and increased transparency.
Perform Evaluation
First of all, you need to decide on evaluation periods. Many successful companies argue for the need for frequent evaluations. When we say frequent, we mean at least every three months. The data from research done by Wakefield Research also backs that up, as over half of professionals would prefer their managers conducting performance appraisals at least once a month.
After gathering performance data with time management apps, it’s time to create reports and organize a face-to-face meeting with each employee. During the meeting, make sure to go over employee’s development aspirations as well as their current situation. Everyone loves improving, and this can be achieved with both positive and negative feedback if used in a constructive way.
Conclusion
Performance reviews created based on the data employee time tracking software collected are a helpful tool for harmonizing individual employee’s and company’s goals. When done right, it’s an irreplaceable productivity booster and therefore company’s success improver.
