Performance Reviews for Heightened Employee Engagement: Yes? No? Maybe?

Unless you’ve been living under an HR rock the past several years or are in extreme denial, you’re aware of the link between employee engagement and job performance. (Of course, leading research organizations like Gallup and respected employee engagement survey companies like Modern Survey could have it all wrong.

We don’t think they do, though.)

What’s less certain is the role that performance reviews play in engaging employees. Can employee assessments help drive engagement? Should employers manage and attempt to improve employee engagement as a part of the review process?

The answer to both questions is the same: It depends.

But let’s start with what’s undeniable: A key part of workforce management is laying out goals and helping employees understand whether they’re reaching expectations. That’s a given, regardless of what you believe about the whole performance reviews-driving-engagement riddle.

Then look at setting and assessing employee goals through the lens of employee engagement. Guess what. Employees who are highly engaged are much more likely to feel they receive clear performance goals, that they get routine and valid feedback about their progress toward those goals, and that their managers are actively involved in the process.

In fact, of the six steps that Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace offers for improving employee engagement, three are related to setting and tracking goals for employee performance. “Managers who focus on their employees’ strengths,” the report says, “can practically eliminate active disengagement and double the average of U.S. workers who are engaged.”

Going a step further, researchers at the University of Toronto and University of Guelph concluded that performance management absolutely should evaluate and focus on employee engagement in addition to job performance.

“Making employee engagement part of the performance management process not only makes it an ongoing and constant issue rather than a once-a-year survey, it also signals to employees that it is important and the organization is committed to improving the engagement of its employees,” according to paper co-author Alan Saks.

So, should you try to improve employee engagement as a part of the review process? The odds seem to say you should. But even if you think it makes sense, you’ll need a performance review system that makes it possible to include key drivers of engagement in the performance review process.

A Web-based, automated solution like Reviewsnap makes the employee performance review more strategic. As a result, everyone involved sees the same goals, and you’ll see better results and increased engagement.

Midyear Checkup: Looking Back, Thinking Ahead

We can hear you already: Annual performance reviews are such a pain in the neck, why would I want to double the agony by doing them at midyear, too?

Bear with us. The benefits outweigh your fears.

The midyear mark is a good time to check on employees’ progress toward their performance goals. It’s a good

time to make sure development plans are on track — and make adjustments if they’re not. Finally, midyear is the right time to assess and revise goals for the rest of the year.

In a nutshell: Midyear is the perfect time for employees and managers to combine their discussions and plans around goal-setting and appraisals.

In addition, consider these other important reasons for midyear performance reviews, from respected HR veteran Victor Lipman:

1. They force managers to give meaningful feedback. Meaningful feedback between managers and their reports is assumed to be an ongoing practice. But it’s easily lost in the ebb and flow of daily work. A formal midyear performance assessment increases the odds of timely attention to key issues.

2. They require managers and their subordinates to confront difficult issues they both might otherwise ignore. Lipman call this the “unpleasant cousin” of point No. 1. A prescribed midyear appraisal mechanism makes it less likely that conflicts will be avoided until it’s too late to effectively deal with them.

3. They make year-end evaluations easier. Comprehensive and well-organized midyear performance reviews create a blueprint for what lies ahead. Hopefully, key strengths and weaknesses will be aired and discussed, and end-of-year surprises will at least be minimized.

4. They can improve employee engagement. People want to know how they’re doing. If done candidly, fairly, and constructively, midyear evaluations offer meaningful feedback and help employees make course corrections by the year’s end.

Now that you’re at least considering adding midyear performance reviews to your lineup, what steps should you take? First, realize that HR leaders, team managers, and employees all benefit from a system that creates an automated, user-friendly performance review process. Reviewsnap is one of those systems.

Reviewsnap prevents the midyear review process from being a headache because it streamlines and automates the entire process. The same features that do that, which include automated self-reviews, ease employees’ anxiety about their upcoming reviews. The process actively involves employees and boosts employee engagement.

For HR managers, midyear reviews handled with a Web-based, automated solution like Reviewsnap afford customized performance reviews that truly align with organizational goals. They provide an opportunity at midyear to assess and possibly reset company and department goals, and track progress toward those objectives.

Midyear performance reviews — you owe it to your organization to consider them.

360 Reviews for a Team of One? You Bet.

In this corner, with a record of effectively improving career development and job performance —supported by detailed feedback from managers as well as colleagues — we have 360 degree performance reviews.

In the opposite corner, with a proven record of improving efficiency — supported through lean staffing and related Six Sigma models, downsizing as a result of the recent recession, and the rise of the mobile-

technology-enabled workforce — we have the team of one.

The contradiction seems obvious. By definition, 360 degree performance assessments take into account feedback from co-workers, colleagues, and managers. Some 360 reviews even include customers. Regardless of the scope and level of detail they dive into, an effective 360 feedback solution is among the most important investments an organization can make in enhancing career development.

Yet more and more employees and managers are working as a team of one. They perform solo. They work remotely — at home or in offices — away from company headquarters or regional offices. They may have no structured group of peers, subordinates, or managers with whom they have routine contact or who regularly see them perform their jobs. 

All of that said, to paraphrase the famous line of poetry, no person is an island. Everyone can benefit from the 360 review process, even those in your organization who don’t have a ready list of raters.

Here are some tips for effectively applying 360 performance reviews to a team of one, for both the “single worker” and the managers or executives responsible for their development:

·       Think about the relationships that the solo employee has, even though they may not be on the traditional organization chart, and build a team of raters that way. These might include business partners, suppliers and vendors, and customers.

·       Then cast a wider net to capture feedback from as many other sources as you can. Maybe there are indirect connections the employee has in your organization, people they rely upon for HR or administrative support, for example.

·       Set the stage early to invite this wider, nontraditional network of potential raters into the system. A fully featured 360 feedback solution like the one offered by Reviewsnap includes unlimited anonymous surveys, allowing for numerous reviews, with automatic notifications that act as reminders for upcoming or past-due surveys.

·       Understand how the nontraditional outside perspectives can have an impact on the employee’s development moving forward.
 

·       Be sure to stress the confidential nature of the 360 review process, especially for people who are new to the process or may be outside of the employee’s standard reporting line.

·       Regardless of who information comes from, avoid vague conclusions; use a proven statistical method to ensure the integrity of your assessments.

The bottom line is that unless yours is a sole-proprietor business with no employees and no managers or directors other than the owner, anyone can benefit from 360 degree feedback. It’s all a matter of how you get there.