6 Steps for Creating Better Employee Reviews

Brief 

An agile performance management program can improve employee engagement by creating clearly articulated goals and increasing the cycle of regular feedback, but managers will need the right training and resources to do this successfully, writes Casey Pechan. “Managers should also be open to receiving feedback from employees regarding their workload, obstacles they’re facing, and the quality and helpfulness of the manager’s feedback,” Pechan writes.

Insight

Many companies have embraced agility in recent years. The more the world changes in unpredictable ways, the more critical it is for us to react nimbly. Yet performance management processes have largely been stagnant. To achieve agility across the organization, you need to embrace agile performance management.

Performance management in the pandemic forced changes in the way we manage performance today. Although agility was trending before COVID-19, companies had to become agile to survive. Customers’ needs changed overnight, and companies needed to react quickly to stay in the game.

But we don’t need to wait for dire circumstances to implement agile processes. Employee performance is the life force of your company. If employees can’t adjust in the face of change or support sudden shifts in business priorities, the whole company suffers.

By implementing agile performance management, you can enable employees to meet the business’s evolving needs and propel the company forward. Here’s everything you need to know about why agile performance management is essential and how to implement it at your organization.

Agile vs. Traditional Performance Management

Traditionally, performance management has been isolated to the performance-based annual review process. Under this model, managers evaluate performance but don’t give real-time feedback that helps employees improve. Traditional performance management produces data on performance consistently but with low frequency (typically only once or twice per year).

Traditional performance management can catch employees off guard. When too much time passes between an employee’s actions and when they’re evaluated, they may be surprised by what turns up on their review. Those feelings of distrust make it challenging to have a productive conversation about performance improvement.