Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones, But Words Will Hurt You Too!

The way feedback is handled is vital to the way the messages are received by employees. It never ceases to amaze just how careless some managers can be in how they provide verbal and written feedback.

During feedback about performance, employees have a heightened sense of sensitivity about what they are being told and with the normal "noise" that occurs in interpersonal communication, the stage is set for misunderstanding and hard feelings to develop. Being crystal clear when providing feedback during informal and formal interactions is more than just a little important.

Some managers believe that just giving feedback is sufficient. They lack an awareness about how much impact their words can have on their employees. Because employees often misintrepret what they are being told or they hear what they want to hear, the words spoken or written by the manager have to convey exactly what they mean.

Lack of clarity, use of "trigger" words (those that provoke anger or resentment), lack of thoroughness, conflicting messages, and the inability to present negative feedback in a constructive manner are all land mines for performance reviews and ongoing feedback. Employees have certain expectations about the feedback they will receive during a performance review or feedback session. They want clarity, they want to understand exactly how the manager believes they are performing and they expect to be treated with respect regardless of the message.

Managers need to prepare for delivering feedback so that the words being used are the ones that will deliver the message in a way the employee will understand and respect. Managers who think they can ad-lib or just throw some verbiage together are inviting confusion and resentment on the part of the employee. Here are some recommendations for getting the right words into the feedback:

1) Put yourself in the employees' shoes. Think about how your words will affect them. And think about feedback you have received. What did you think was fair and objective feedback and what did you think was unfair and inaccurate or incomplete? How did you feel in both situations? Did certain words trigger certain emotions in you?

2) Prepare. Write down what you want to say, read it, tweak it as necessary, reread and tweak again if needed. Get to the point where you feel the message you want to convey is accurate, thorough without being redundant, and is not offensive in any way.

3) Look at and think about each word you're using in the feedback. Ask yourself if there is a better way to get your message across. Does a particular word or phrase convey more negativity than it should? If so, replace the word or phrase to "soften" the impact yet still deliver an accurate and complete message about the employee's performance.

4) Keep the words simple. Using big words to impress the employees will only turn them off and close down the communication process. If the employee doesn't understand what a word means and doesn't ask what it means, imagine the potential to misinterpret or conjure up inaccurate definitions of the word.

These simple guidelines will go a long way in getting your messaging more clear and more accepted by the employee. Try these next time you're providing feedback or preparing comments for a performance review and you might be surprised at how much more receptive employees will be.

Self-Awareness as a Competency

We've all seen it haven't we? That employee with good intellect that just seems to irritate people and continually struggle to gain acceptance within the organization.

It's not uncommon to find employees who have had plenty of good coaching, training and help for whatever reason just flat out self-destruct right before our eyes. These are employees who have the brains and skills to do the job, but just can't get along with others or are in some way more than slightly disruptive to their team.

Let's face it, just being smart in no way translates into being a good employee. One relatively recent study by Leadership IQ found that 46% of new hires failed within the first 18 months of being hired. That statistic is certainly organization-dependent, but with a number that high across so many organizations involved in the study it illustrates that being a good employee is harder than it may seem.

Some of these employees are even great at the technical part of their jobs. But in terms of fitting in, they're a mess. So on the one hand we have a great worker, and on the other hand a terrible co-worker. I have a friend who calls employees with excellent technical skills, but lousy interpersonal skills 'organizational terrorists'. Of course, that doesn't mean they are a threat to fellow employees. It simply means they can be very disruptive of their work surroundings and more than just a little frustrating to their fellow employees.

Over the years, we come to learn that people really do come in all sorts of personality packages. Based on my experience dealing with these types of employees, it seems to boil down to very often a substantial to complete lack of self-awareness. In other words, they just do not understand how they are behaving and how much their behavior is impacting others. Unfortunately in a lot of cases these employees can't be coached to become enough more self-aware to save them from eventually having to leave the organization.

One such employee that I once had the "pleasure" of managing looked at me during a coaching session and said "I just can't help it that I'm so rude and annoying." And you know what, she was probably right. Those tendencies were so deeply ingrained into her personality that no matter how much I coached her, she could only get along with others for so long before she slipped back into those old habits and figuratively speaking ripped someone's head off. Needless to say, she was terminated. The sad part of that story is that she was also one of the very best technical employees I've ever employed.

But there are opportunities to coach self-awareness and to make self-awareness a key competency in your performance reviews. Everyone in the organization needs to understand the importance of being self-aware and display behaviors that reflect self-awareness.

Think about your employees for a minute or two and mentally rank them on a scale of 1to 5 (5 being highest) in terms of how self-aware you think they are. You might be surprised at how many of the employees need to work on their self-awareness skills.

Objectivity Can Be Hard To Come By

Have you ever sat down to do a certain employee's performance review and felt the urge to blast them in terms of ratings even though they do a pretty darned good job? Or how about the employee you seem to have a special place in your heart for? Do you feel compelled to give them better ratings than they really deserve because you like them?

These aren't necessarily uncommon occurrences in the world of conducting employee evaluations. Human nature being what it is, it can be tough at times to maintain a reasonable level of objectivity. The employee who is less likable, at least from your vantage point, can get cheated out of accurate ratings simply because your negative bias creeps into the process. On the other hand, that employee who may be a great diplomat and, well let's just say it, butt kisser, might garner more positive ratings than warranted.

So how do we avoid falling into the trap of being overly subjective in reviewing employees? The first step is to focus on the employee's positive work attributes. Do they do their jobs well? Do they bring certain skills to the team that are important to overall success? Are there skill or behavioral deficiencies that need to be enhanced? If so, specifically what are they?

Think in terms of the work they do and the workplace behavior for each employee being reviewed and focus less on whether the employee is cool or funny or geeky or socially awkward. Without question, if coaching to be a more effective communicator, for example, is needed, don't avoid going there. But don't let your perception of their personality traits influence your ratings of the employee in a more dramatic manner than necessary.

Now we all understand that there are the obnoxious or arrogant or irritating employees among us at times. The key with those people is trying to coach them to minimize those "behaviors" and make them less overt in the workplace. The more effective you are in coaching those "behaviors" out of the employee over time, the less they will subconsciouly creep into your perception and, therefore, evaluation of their work.

In short, take a step back when looking at how employees truly perform. Try your best to put those personal biases aside and maintain as much fairness as possible. Sometimes that is easier said than done, but your own credibility is at stake. Discounting the notion that you could be introducing undue bias into the process is potentially harmful to your reputation as an effective manager.

The Importance of Timely Reviews

Performance reviews are important for a number of reasons. And employees come to expect their reviews to be completed on time. When performance reviews are allowed to slide beyond their due dates, employee morale can be negatively impacted.

Employees are affected because the message that essentially gets sent to them when reviews are not completed on time is that they are not respected and the manager and organization just don't care about them enough to complete what they perceive to be a relatively simple task. If a review due date is missed by a day or two, that is one thing, but when they are missed by a number of days or weeks, that's when the employee begins to become frustrated. This is especially true in the absence of communication about why the review may be late in coming.

Because compensation is often associated with the timing of the performance review and directly with the results of the review, there is also the perception that the organization is simply trying to delay the payment of any additional compensation. Or the employee may even begin to wonder about his/her job security. Is my review not being done because they're going to fire me?! That is certainly a possible reaction.

Having a reminder and accountability system in place will help ensure that performance reviews are completed on time. Holding managers responsible for getting their reviews done on time is critical because of the potential impact on the employee and on the overall culture of the team or organization in general.

Don't allow managers to slide on this very important responsibility. If they are allowed to be habitually late with their reviews, problems with employee morale and engagement are sure to follow.

ReviewSNAP Launches AuthoriCheck - Discriminatory/Derogatory Terms Scanning Tool

This afternoon ReviewSNAP launched our new AuthoriCheck tool. AuthoriCheck will be accessed using the gavel icon next to the spell check icon in the text editor above all narrative type boxes within the system. It will give you the ability to scan for any discriminatory and derogatory terms that may have been entered into the text. This tool will help your company avoid any legal issues from arising during the performance appraisal process. Keep in mind that this is only an identifier of potentially discriminatory or derogatory verbiage and is not a substitute for legal advice. If you have any questions or need any help on using this tool, please don't hesitate to email or call us at (800) 516-5849.

Recent ReviewSNAP Enhancements

Recently we made a few changes to ReviewSNAP regarding automatic notifications for upcoming and past due reviews as well as automated reminders sent to managers to leave feedback on their employees. Both enhancements are completely optional and can be modified in the Manage Company Information page.

As part of the change for the automatic notifications, we have added more intervals and now allow you to select which intervals you would like the notifications sent out for. Also, if you need or want to turn off the notifications, you can now do so by unchecking the box next to all of the intervals. Below is the list of intervals that you can select to have notifications sent out for:

Review Notifications:

30 Days, 10 Days, 5 Days, Day of Review, 2 Days Past Due, 5 Days Past Due, and 10 Days Past Due.

Based on the request of some of our clients, we have now added a function allowing the system to send automatic reminders to managers about leaving feedback. This is to help ensure strong communication and documentation within the company and the most accurate reviews. This option can also be found in Manage Company Information and allows you to choose how often you want the reminders to be sent out.

If you are looking to automate your performance reviews this is a great tool to have available to you. It saves HR the hassle of harassing managers to complete their reviews and document performance. If you would like to try out our system, feel free contact us for a live demo or sign-up for a free trial.

Congratulations to Our Contest Winner!

Congratulations to Steve Griffin for becoming ReviewSNAP’s quarterly free subscription winner. Steve has won a year-long free subscription to ReviewSNAP’s Web-based performance management system for his company. He was among many who played our Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That contest and successfully provided the correct answer. Then luck was on his side when he was selected from a random drawing among others that provided the right answer.

So want to know the correct answer finally?

We asked what word can be written forward, backward or upside down and still be read from left to right. The correct answer is NOON.

Thanks to everyone who participated. Continue to visit our blog or follow ReviewSNAP on Twitter to stay updated on our next quarter’s contest and details on how you can win a free year’s subscription for your company.

Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That. Let's Begin!

Hi Everyone,


Below is the riddle for this quarter's free first year ReviewSNAP subscription contest. You only get one shot at answering the riddle correctly so click on the riddle to submit your answer. And choose your answer wisely. You will have until 5 PM CST on Friday August 14th to answer the riddle. Next week we will post this quarter's winner. Good luck!

Riddle: What word can be written forward, backward or upside down and still be read from left to right?

Riddle Me This and Win a Free Annual Subscription!

Riddle me this, riddle me that and you can win an annual subscription! ReviewSNAP will be giving away one free first year subscription in our quarterly Twitter contest. The contest will start on Monday, August 1oth at Noon CST.

We will tweet a short riddle and post it on our blog and give our followers the entire week to answer the question. The answer form link will be on the ReviewSNAP blog in the lower right hand corner of the page. Also, we will send out the link via various social media sites.

The contest will close on Friday, August 14th at 5 PM CST.

Format and Rules:

At the end of the week, we will randomly pick 20 people who answered the riddle correctly. From that group of 20, we will select the winner. We'll post the selection process here on our blog, so everyone can follow along! You will only be able to submit one answer so choose your answer wisely.

Good Luck!

Don't Let Your Performance Appraisals Be Cumbersome Like This!

Some companies and employees dread performance appraisals because of how cumbersome they can be. The humorous video below illustrates this fact. To avoid having your performance appraisals become cumbersome, try ReviewSNAP and automate your entire review process.

Follow Up on Open Ended Questions

This post is a follow up to the announcement that we were in the process of adding the ability to use open-ended questions in your performance appraisals. This post is to let you know that this function has been completed and is now implemented in the ReviewSNAP Performance Management System.

Upcoming Additions to ReviewSNAP

Shortly after it was decided to add open ended questions to ReviewSNAP, we also decided to add the capability of creating rating scales anywhere from 1 point to 10 points. The ReviewSNAP system initially allowed you to create your own rating scales, but only on a 5 point scale. Soon you will be able to create your own rating scales with any number of rating points between 1 and 10 for your performance appraisals and 360 degree feedback surveys. We are working hard to have this change completed by the middle of July 2009. ReviewSNAP will always entertain requests for changes to the system to accomodate specific needs and if you are looking for something that may differ from our current features and functionality, let us know and we will be happy to discuss your suggestions.

Spellchecker and Format Editor Added to ReviewSNAP

Everyone at some point questions whether or not they spelled something correctly or they used the correct grammar. Well you no longer need to worry about that when adding comments/suggestion, development plans or adding job descriptions to the ReviewSNAP Performance Management System.

Not only did we add the ability to spell-check your content, but you now have the ability to format it as well. As part of the spell-checker addition we have also added a What-You-See-Is-What-You- Get (WYSIWYG) editor allowing you to add bullets, numbering, bolding, underlining, italicizing, and more.

Establish Productivity Standards

Because productivity has such a profound impact on profits, there must be some way of measuring performance. Setting productivity standards for a particular job is important. Whether it be processing payables or picking orders in the warehouse or some other job, it is possible to establish minimum standards in terms of output. These standards become expectations for your employees. Also, incentives can be established for performance above the minimum performance level. In order to establish standards it is essential that you understand what it takes to do the job and what a reasonable work pace is. Setting unrealistically high or low standards can be detrimental to productivity and/or morale. It is also imperative that employees are held accountable on meeting these productivity standards which can be done through performance reviews.

Employees Creating Their Own Goals

Do your employees create their own goals in your current review process or do their managers create the goals for them? Now with ReviewSNAP you have the option of creating goals either way. You can have the managers create the employee's goals and the employee will be able to view the goals, but make no additions or changes to the goals. Or, you have the option of allowing employees to create their goals, discuss them with their manager and once they agree on the goals the manager will have the ability to lock down or approve those goals. From then on the goals that have been approved can no longer be changed, but the employee will be able to create additional goals if necessary.

ReviewSNAP Price Increase - Lock In Now

ReviewSNAP™ has recently launched several enhancements and modules to our Web-based performance management system. These include:

•eSignature to help you make your performance review process completely paperless.
•Comment suggestions to help managers/reviewers find just the right verbiage to support ratings.
•Employee import feature that allows you to import your existing employee information to the system.
•Logo upload that lets you personalize the system and review templates to your specific organization.

Also, we will soon be launching our compensation recommendation tool. This enhancement will allow you to create recommended percentage increases for employees’ compensation based on overall ratings. This feature can be turned on or off at your discretion.

As you may know, ReviewSNAP360™, a complete 360 degree feedback module will be bundled with the current performance review solution. It will afford your organization the opportunity to gather important feedback from superiors, peers, and subordinates on employee levels including managers, team leaders, group supervisors, and other staff levels of your choice.

Our goal is to offer the most powerful and flexible system possible at the most affordable prices. Due to the recent enhancements and the imminent release of ReviewSNAP360™, annual subscription rates will be going up.

Since you are currently or have been a free trial member we are offering you the opportunity to subscribe to ReviewSNAP at the current subscription rates until 11/15/2008. If you do subscribe to ReviewSNAP prior to the 15th and don't exceed your initial employee limit, you will be locked in at that price for annual renewals.

Although our prices will be changing they will still remain the most affordable on the market and you will have access to the most powerful version of ReviewSNAP yet.

Are Your Performance Reviews Efficient?

Does your current review process work efficiently? Is it too much of a hassle to even worry about? Let us know what you think about your current review process by clicking on the link below and filling out a quick two question survey.

Performance Review Process Survey

Make The Most of Your Assets

Employee's are a company's biggest and most important asset typically consuming around 70% of a company's overall budget. This is exactly why you want to make the most of your assets (employee's). Companies can hire a world of potentially talented employees, but don't have the processes in place to get the most out of that world of talent.

ReviewSNAP™ will put a review process in place that will save time, save money, increase sales and profits, enhance employee productivity and morale, and achieve levels never before reached. Our consultants, in collaboration with other human resource professionals, have developed the ReviewSNAP™ Performance Review System to assist organizations in managing their performance review/appraisal process.

By taking advantage of our feedback, goal creation and development plans you will be able to have a more accountable, yet relaxed review process. As an employee this let's you know how you have performed throughout your review period and what needs to be done to perform well. So, no longer do you have to worry about walking into your boss' office and hear something completely unexpected.

Performance Appraisal Software

Capterra, a leading online destination for business software buyers, recently released a survey in which more than 1000 respondents shared what type of software their businesses are looking to buy. Performance Appraisal Software was desired by 13% of those who participated in the survey.

ReviewSNAP offers a highly flexible, Web-based performance appraisal system and was built to fit the needs of companies of all sizes and industries.

Automate Your Performance Review Process

Evaluating employee performance is an important part of providing clear feedback, improving morale and productivity,increasing accountability, and enhancing communication between the manager and the employee. Using a web-based solution to automate the process is a growing trend among organizations of all sizes and types.

ReviewSNAP™ provides an automated, web-based solution for conductingyour employee evaluations and for documenting performance on anongoing basis. It is highly flexible and allows for employeeself-evaluations and automatic notifications of approaching reviewdue dates. Check out reviewsnap today and take advantage of the freeno obligation 21 day trial.