It’s November and that is usually the time for annual performance reviews. Most companies I ever worked for had some shape or form of annual performance reviews. Some sucked badly, some were fun and most were really boring and useless. I am now mostly on the side of the reviewer and not the reviewed and so I am getting ready to conduct them with my team. Here are some thoughts I collected over the years.

Garbage in garbage out 

Honestly it is really about preparation. There are lots of templates, formats and ways of doing the reviews but at the end of the day if you are not prepared – the person on the other side of the table will know, you will feel terrible AND the whole exercise will be a waste of time. I am not saying you should write a 20 page essay on each member of your team. Instead focus on summarising and structuring your feedback in way that your employee will understand your expectations. Each time I skipped this and just went with it on the fly the other side felt neglected and I felt like shit.

Don’t be too nice

Another way of wasting time is to spend 60 minutes on how someone is awesome. Your team can always use a pat on the back – but this is not the place for too much praise or sugarcoating. You can open with positive feedback and set the stage of what was great but your focus should be on things that can be improved and on where the employee would like to develop. You should clearly communicate your expectations and set specific goals. Go back to the first bit if you ask yourself how to come up with those in the meeting.

Manage their careers

Remember that the purpose is not just telling the person how well or how bad they are doing. It is also about what they want to do, where they want to move, which skills they want to develop. Often managers talk about what the company needs and how the employee can help. This leads to good people being frustrated and leaving as they feel they are not being listened to. The purpose of a performance review is aligning goals of the company with the goals of the employee. Bending them to your will will not make them happy.

Don’t skip the salary question

This one depends on the company heavily but I prefer addressing the compensation question directly and proactively. Part of the preparation is considering how you think the employee’s package should change. In the meeting I tend to ask first and compare the needs of the employee with what I hand in mind. This gives me a clear negotiating space with clear boundaries. If you are able to finalise changes directly in the meeting – cool. I tend to take the request from the employee with me and consider it separately. You don’t have to answer immediately but you can indicate whether their request is somewhat in line of what you thought.

Time

I tend to say a single person can’t directly manage more than 7-8 people. The same applies to performance reviews. The preparation and the meetings plus follow-up take a lot of time and can be exhausting. Don’t try to do too many of them. In some companies everyone gives feedback to everyone – and while that may sound really cool – it is also very hard to execute and reduces quality. Don’t make it too painful on yourself because it is really important and deserves your focus.

Do you have a different experience? How does your company do performance reviews?