Four Ways to Make Performance Reviews More Professional and Encourage Greater Professionalism in Our Employees

Sean Conrad is our guest blogger today. He is a senior product analyst and Certified Human Capital Strategist at Halogen Software in Ottawa, Canada. Sean is great at sharing his unique blend of technology expertise and understanding of HR-specific challenges.

Employee performance reviews are a much maligned, but important management process that, when done well, can provide significant benefits to the employee, the manager and the organization.

The problems come in when we fail to conduct them professionally. Here’s a look at how four of the seven mind-sets can help improve the quality, impact, value and professionalism of your employee performance reviews.

1.     Focus on Results (Mind-Set #1)

Both when setting goals, and when evaluating accomplishments and performance, managers and employees need to focus on results. What is the employee accountable for? What are the standards by which success will be measured? What is expected, and what would be considered going beyond expectation?

Recorded goals should clearly lay out all these expectations and form a kind of “performance agreement” between the manager and the employee. Then, when it’s time to review performance and accomplishments, you have clear guidelines for measuring success.

Any performance ratings should be based on the results accomplished, not on a general impression of the employee’s performance, or the manager’s relationship with them. If we want our employees to have a bias for results, we need to start by making sure they understand what results we’re looking for.

2.     Cultivate Core Values  (Mind-Set #4)

As important as focusing on the results accomplished, employee performance reviews also need to consider “how” these results were accomplished. This is where core and job specific competencies come in.

Competencies describe “how” work is done, and describe the qualities of exemplary performance. Every company should carefully select core, leadership and job-specific competencies that reflect its mission and values. Then, actively cultivate these competencies in their employees.

You should include a description of each competency and the different levels of performance on your performance review forms so managers and employees have a clear and shared understanding of expectations.

If we want our staff to have personal standards that transcend organizational ones, we need to lead the way by actively communicating and cultivating organizational values.

3.     Give a Larger Context (Mind-Set #2)

You can foster a more collaborative and accountable workforce by always giving employees a larger context for their work. With goals, it’s important to directly link the employee’s individual goals to the higher level organizational goals they are designed to support.

Likewise, the competencies they will be evaluated on should be linked to their role and to the organization’s mission, culture and values. And any time you assign an employee a development plan, you should also clearly link it to the competency it’s designed to develop, or to the goal it’s designed to support.

This context setting helps employees know they’re part of something bigger and drives accountability and engagement.

4.     Support Development (Mind-Set #7)

Continuous development is another hallmark of professionalism that you can and should foster through your employee performance review process.

One of the chief goals of giving feedback and coaching, evaluating demonstration of competencies, reviewing performance of goals and assigning goals for the coming period should be to encourage the employee’s development, performance and career progression.

If we’re not trying to help employees get better at what they do, what are we really doing? Development and career progression discussions should be part of every performance review. And feedback, coaching and recognition need to be ongoing, year-round activities that continually help the employee to learn and advance.

Driving High Performance and Professionalism

When done professionally, performance reviews help to drive employee engagement, accountability and high performance. Their goal should be to foster continuous development and career advancement and encourage the 7 mind-sets so necessary to professionalism. When they fail to do that, it’s often because of the way we design and conduct our processes.

Sean Conrad is senior product analyst and Certified Human Capital Strategist at Halogen Software and writes regularly about the importance and impact of performance management best-practices.