Conducting Annual Employee Reviews

Any great boss will tell you that employee reviews are a cornerstone for having happy and productive employees.  Employees need to know what their strengths and weaknesses are.  Once an employee understands their performance, you and the employee can take steps to improve their weaknesses.

How to Conduct Annual Reviews

An annual review can help you keep your employees happy, engaged, and focused.  It is human nature to want to succeed, so by offering your employees feedback on their positive and negative attributes, you are guiding them on their pathway to success.  A poorly designed annual review can have the reverse effect.  In this module, we will discover how to conduct a well-designed employee annual review.

Develop the Process

A well-developed annual review process can help strengthen your employees and your company. Reviews help employees see their strengths and weaknesses, and can be a great way to recognize them for their great work and let them know what needs to be improved.  Here are some ways to develop your annual review:

• Put thought into your evaluation– You should decide what it is you are wanting to convey to your employee, what message you are wanting them to leave with. Many times, these evaluations are rushed, but your employees need to know that the evaluation is important, because they are important.
• Set categories– Decide what categories of the job are going to be included in the employee evaluation.
• Set benchmarks for the categories selected– Take the time to decide what the benchmarks should be for the set categories. Make sure to do research, the benchmarks should be realistic.
• Location, location, location– Take the time to find a place that is private, and not too sterile. You want the employee to be comfortable, and don’t want to have the whole office eavesdropping.
• Have an agenda– Having an agenda helps relieve some anxieties an employee may be having about the review. Your agenda should include:
  • Past Performances– What the employee’s performance was the previous year or years
  • Current Performance– What the employee’s current performance is.
  • Next Year’s Goals- What new goals or benchmarks you’d like the employee to meet.
  • Game plan- The plan that you are going to utilize in order for the employee to correct any problems, and meet the future set goals.
• Have periodic reviews – You don’t want to go a whole year and have an employee suddenly find out they are not preforming to the best of their abilities. You want to prepare them before an annual evaluation, so have periodic evaluations throughout the year.  This way, the employee can understand what they are doing correctly, and what needs work before their annual review.   These periodic evaluations help the employee to change whatever is prohibiting them from being the best they can be.  They also help you as a supervisor determine if additional training is necessary.
• Decide the appropriate paperwork– Decide what paperwork you will need for the review. This could include job descriptions, your periodic reviews, etc.
• Get organized! – Make sure you have the employee’s records organized so that the annual review is not traumatic for the employee or reviewer.

With our Conducting Annual Employee Reviews course, you will discover how to conduct a well-designed employee review. By determining the categories for an annual review and understanding how it affects employee compensation, an overall increase in performance should be seen throughout your organization.

Course Objectives:

• Understand the process of conducting an annual review.
• Determine the categories for an annual review.
• Know the mistakes managers make during an annual review.
• Understand the concept of pay for performance.
• Know how to tie employee compensation to firm-wide returns.
• Know the value of employee communication.
• Gauge employees’ happiness.