Performance Review Research

Freestyle PR of Des Moines, IA is running a quick survey on performance reviews and would like as many participants as possible. Click here to participate in the survey.

REVIEWSNAP ANNOUNCES RECORD GROWTH IN 2009, TRIPLING ITS CLIENT BASE

ReviewSNAP, a leading supplier of Web-based performance management, announced today that 2009 was a groundbreaking year for the company with their key business initiatives and milestones that were successfully accomplished, including tripling its client base and increasing its revenue by 300 percent in just one year. The ReviewSNAP application is the industry's first online performance review system that allows small- to medium-size businesses and nonprofits access to automate and streamline their employee review system at a price point that is affordable to their budgets. Other notable achievements that defined 2009 as a successful year for ReviewSNAP include the following accomplishments

• Entered into five strategic partnerships
• Added a 360 degree feedback module bundled with its performance review module
• Increased its revenue by 300 percent
• Tripled its client base within one year

"By providing our online performance management system at a price point that allows nonprofits and small- to medium-size business owners to benefit from a paperless solution, ReviewSNAP has risen to become the recognized leader in on-demand employee reviews," said Chris Arringdale, Director of Marketing of ReviewSNAP. " Building on our successful 2009, we will be launching our compensation module as part of our bundled package and aggressively building more strategic partnerships all while continuing our top-of-line customer services."

ReviewSNAP Launches New Site Design!

As of this morning ReviewSNAP launched its new site design. The look of our application hasn't changed, but the look of our homepage and sub pages has taken on a completely different look. Check out the new look of ReviewSNAP!

The Purpose of 360 Degree Feedback

A common question that we hear is "should we use 360 degree feedback to do that or performance reviews?" Well, that depends on what you are doing. Are managers expected to conduct performance reviews on their employees? Is this an official review? Or do you want multiple raters? Is this just a benchmark and not the official review? Are you wanting to create a feedback mechanism for coaching purposes?

360 degree feedback allows you to use multiple raters such as supervisors, peers, direct reports, subordinates and external raters (clients or vendors) to leave feedback on an employee. The feedback is often used as a benchmark within the employee's development plan. In a team-focused atmosphere, 360 degree feedback surveys can be very effective. It lets the employee know how his/her team members view the effectiveness of their performance.

It is important that the feedback remain anonymous to the person who was rated. If employees are allowed to see the comments and ratings and who left them, feelings of resentment can arise along with tension among the employee and the raters.

If you plan to implement the 360 degree feedback process, make sure that you have a strong performance management system in place before doing so. 360 degree feedback and performance reviews are often used in conjunction with one another to form a powerful one-two punch for employee coaching and development.

ReviewSNAP Announces Expansion of Referral Partner Program

ReviewSNAP, the most user-friendly and affordable Web-based performance management system, announced today that it is expanding its Referral Partnership Program. The company has always offered an Affiliate program and last year began to form referral partnerships on a limited basis with PEO organizations, HRIS system providers, and business and human resource consulting firms.

Because of overwhelming success of the program, the decision was made in January to begin offering it to a wider base of organizations and individual consultants. The program offers Referral Partners the opportunity to offer the ReviewSNAP performance review and 360 degree feedback system to their client bases and other businesses and non-profit organizations and earn a substantial referral fee for doing so. Because ReviewSNAP requires its client user to pay an annual subscription fee, Referral Partners are able to generate an ongoing passive revenue stream.

The program is simple and straightforward. Dave Arringdale, President of ReviewSNAP's parent company, Applied Training Systems, Inc., said "Our philosophy is that we succeed only if we create win-win situations with all of our partners. Our referral partner program is easy to be a part of and it can generate a significant source of revenue for our referral partners. Our product and the accompanying customer service are second to none and it is the most affordable Web-based performance management solution available. That makes it a natural fit for organizations or individuals who want to offer a performance management system to their clients or any other potential users."

The company encourages you to contact our Account Management team at (800) 516-5849 to learn more about this exciting opportunity. Visit our site at www.reviewsnap.com to learn more about the premier performance management system.

The Importance of Ongoing Communication with Your Employees

If your job consisted of continuous monitoring of whether or not the managers of the company were consistently and effectively communicating with their employees, what conclusions do you think you would make? My guess is that you would find that the communication would be generally ineffective and not results-oriented. All too often managers don't make the time to communicate with their employees about their performance and what can be done to achieve their respective goals.

If managers wait for performance review time to provide important feedback, they are missing tremendous opportunities to elevate the level and value of communication. To benefit both the company and the employee managers and supervisors need to communicate with the employee throughout the entire year. Obviously there is the possibility of over-communication and micromanagement and both should be avoid. But well placed communication about performance will help employees capitalize on their potential. Managers need to make sure employees are progressing toward achieving their goals and and they should continue to coach the employee where performance is lagging. And certainly excellent performance should be recognized along the way.

Not communicating with the employee can lead to a couple of things. One, the employee could run into some surprises when you are having your review meeting with them and they very likely won't receive the message well. Or the employee could be stuck in a rut and they won't have made any progress toward their goals and areas of focus leaving them "spinning their wheels", so to speak.

Using a Web-based performance management system can significantly enhance ongoing communication and goal management. to do your performance These systems are designed to not only provide the "infrastructure" for performance reviews and feedback surveys, but to provide tools that drive communication on an ongoing basis.

Top five employee performance review tips businesses should consider when creating their 2010 News Year’s Resolutions according to ReviewSNAP

ReviewSNAP™ offers the following tips on how making maximizing employee performance a New Year’s resolution that will benefit both employees and the organization.

1. Create realistic goals and expectations.
2. Develop a method to measure success against each employee’s goal.
3. Provide ongoing feedback and coaching throughout the year to employees.
4. Track progress and areas of improvement for each employee throughout the year to ensure clear and thorough feedback to the employee.
5. Implement an on-demand employee performance management program to substantially enhance the performance review process.

“Employee performance is simply taken too lightly in too many organizations” said David Arringdale, President of ReviewSNAP’s parent company Applied Training Systems, Inc. “The commitment is just not there or the approach is not a good match for the employee base. Using a system such as ReviewSNAP™ can have dramatic results. It was developed based on years of experience and research into what makes employees tick and how feedback about performance should be implemented. When an organization makes a true commitment to maximizing the performance of its employees, the results can be amazing.”

ReviewSNAP has a significant subscriber base using both its performance review and 360 degree feedback modules. Companies benefit from having the flexibility and power to track and document performance easily, assure timely and accurate performance reviews, hold mangers accountable for timely and consistent reviews and gather feedback from other employees to use as a coaching and development tool. Research shows that the quality and timeliness of employee performance reviews affect employees’ perception of the organization they work for and employees with high morale produce quality results. ReviewSNAP was developed to make this process beneficial and easy for both employees and managers.

Des Moines Named Best City to do Business

Marketwatch's annual survey named Des Moines the best city to do business. The survey included metro areas with more than 500,000 people and Des Moines beat out cities such as Washington D.C., Omaha, NE., and Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. ReviewSNAP is proud to be part of this great business city.

ReviewSNAP Launches Cascading Goals in Performance Management System

Yesterday ReviewSNAP launched a cascading goals tool as part of our performance management system. This tool allows you to add goals for the entire company, a department and all employees of a particular job description at the same time. This will eliminate the need to add the same goal into the system a number of times. The addition of this tool also allows you to import your goals into the system all at once. You no longer have to add them in one at a time. Another new cascading goals feature is the ability to select particular goals to automatically rollover to the following review period. This will be very helpful if you have goals that stay the same from year to year. They will automatically roll over to the next review period and you will not have to re-enter them for each review period.

ReviewSNAP Updates List To Be Added To Blog

Upon the request of our client subscribers, ReviewSNAP will soon be adding a section to our blog providing you a list of all of the changes/enhancements that are made to the system over time. To help you better understand the changes/enhancements, we will also be adding a description of the functionality of each feature and how to utilize them within the system. Once the list has been posted, we will send out an email to let you know it is there.