Okay, maybe not fun … but they certainly can be rewarding and beneficial to your company’s success if done with a bit of structure, commitment and positive intention
December is the perfect time to have these conversations. Spending one hour with each team member to reflect on 2022 accomplishments and areas for improvement will pay dividends. Gallup data shows that when employees strongly agree that they received “meaningful feedback” they are almost 4x more likely to be engaged.
To get you started, here are our three tips for high-impact, low-stress performance reviews:
– Approach the review with connection and conversation: The more you create an open dialogue genuinely focused on the team member’s development, the more enjoyable the conversation will be and the more likely that your colleague will absorb any key messages you share.
– Keep it simple: You don’t need long, complicated forms. To get started, ask each team member to write an email with three points: what are your top 3 accomplishments in 2022? In what areas did you struggle? How would you like to grow (or what would you like to improve) in 2023? This will be the basis for your conversation.
– Focus on the “what” AND the “how”: Performance isn’t just about what a team member produced; it’s also about how they showed up. Workplace culture is reinforced through behaviors (the “how”). So, when your colleague shares an accomplishment, ask them to explain how they incorporated your company values.
One bonus tip: End-of-year reviews are most powerful when they reinforce feedback you’ve been providing all year. “No surprises” is a good motto for annual reviews.
If you’d like to learn more about how we do annual reviews at Sagana and our highly successful “feedback forward” approach, please click here to schedule a 30-minute call with Kimberly.
