4 Easy Ways to Make Performance Reviews Stress-Free and Productive

Few things trigger more angst for less payoff than the annual performance review process.

Just the thought of it is enough to send a lot of people into panic mode–employees, managers, and HR alike.

I’m not suggesting that the review process is entirely without merit, but the way it’s executed in far too many places is counterproductive.

The review itself is simply an act of documenting employee performance over a period of time. If you are doing your job well as a manager throughout the year, this process is just a formality.

Everything in the review should be a result of conversations you’ve already had with the employee. Nothing new. No surprises.

But that’s not how it usually goes, is it?

The reason the process hurts so much is the degree of uncertainty in the process. The manager isn’t entirely clear on what to put in the review. The employee isn’t sure what they are going to hear (let alone what kind of rating their entire year of performance will be reduced to).

All of this overperformance that happened in the past and can’t be changed

Here’s the good news.

You can turn these lemons into lemonade.

The first step is to remember a few fundamental things about performance.

1. The role of the manager is to cultivate the performance of their people. This work is primarily about ensuring that employees have what they need to succeed and removing or addressing any obstacles that are in their way.
2. You can’t do anything to change past performance. You can only learn from it to improve future performance.
3. If an employee underperformed in the past, that’s the fault of the manager, not the employee.

Regardless of how well you’ve managed your team’s performance throughout the year, it’s not too late to take the pain out of the review process for you and your people. Even better, you can turn the process into something that actually impacts future performance.

Here are the steps to take now, before the review is due.

1. CHECK-IN Year-to-Date Performance REVIEW

Ask the employee to reflect on and share some notes about the following questions:

• What did they see as their key performance goals for the year?
• How do they feel about their performance this year?
• What are they most proud of?
• What has been most challenging for them this year in terms of meeting expectations?

In advance of your discussion with the employee, write down your own thoughts on each of these questions for that employee. This will allow you to see how well you are creating clarity. If your responses and theirs are different, that’s on you and you should treat it as a learning experience.

2. Focus on future performance.

Discuss with the employees what ideas they have about how to approach next year differently. How could you set them up and support them next year to help them find greater success? What do they want to learn next year that will help them feel more equipped to succeed?

Write these things down. Use them to think about how you need to show up differently for your team next year.

3. Co-create the PERFORMANCE review with the employee.

I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an organization that forbids managers from sharing the contents of a review with the employee for discussion and feedback before it is formally submitted. This begs the question, why don’t more managers do it?

For the employee, the review is pretty high stakes. It becomes part of their formal employment record. It often impacts their compensation and eligibility for promotion. It’s important to get it right.

As a manager, you are fallible. You miss things. You forget things. You can’t see the whole picture. Why not invite the employee into the process to help ensure the process is as balanced and accurate as possible? The bonus is that the more the employee feels a part of the process, the less likely they are to feel it is unfair, even if they don’t like all the content of the review.

4. Create expectation clarity.

If I may be so bold, I’m going to predict that you will almost certainly discover in this process that your employees are not nearly as clear about what was expected of them as you thought. Clarity is the rocket fuel of performance. If you want to unlock a higher level of performance in the future, use the review process as a catalyst.

Partner with the employee to clearly write out the expectations for their role in a way that they understand. Then, revisit these expectations frequently throughout the year, at least monthly. If things shift and it warrants an adjustment, then make the adjustment.

Given how quickly things change, expectations need to be viewed as dynamic and fluid throughout the year. The point of an expectation is to provide clarity for the employee about what’s important and where they should focus. As things evolve, so too should their expectations.

It’s up to you.

The review process doesn’t have to hurt. Remove the uncertainty. Focus on the future.

Not only will you make the review hurt less, you’ll set your people up to crush it next year.

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