The Dreaded Annual Review. Switch it up.
Employers have been giving annual reviews for quite a long time. Many managers and their employees dread this meeting and it can cause a lot of stress on all parties involved. While it’s good to at least have some type of check-in and formality, the structure of the traditional annual review is a bit antiquated, boring, and ineffective.
The good news is that there are plenty of other ways to check-in with employees, provide constructive feedback, discuss performance goals, and even pay increases with a much better vibe and approach.
4 Ways to Switch to Giving Ongoing Feedback Instead of the Antiquated Annual Review
If you’re looking to amp up the effectiveness of employee performance and morale throughout your company but want to ditch the traditional annual review, read these five different approaches.
Discuss Employee’s Future Goals
If you’d like to keep the format of an important meeting with your employees, a great approach is to use this time to discuss the employee’s future goals at the company. This meeting is much more constructive than an annual review because it talks about what is yet to come, rather than things in the past. Plus, it’s extremely motivating to the employee when they can visualize how they may be contributing to the company’s success.
Communicate Changes & Welcome Input
Whenever changes occur within the company, whether it be a procedural process or a strategic pivot, you should not hesitate to send a quick communication to your team about these changes. By being transparent about the changes, you demonstrate to your employees that they deserve to stay in the know. Plus, these small memos are a great way to ask employees for any input or invite conversation if anyone has questions. Making your employees feel valued boosts morale and will also keep performance high as well.
Build Trust with Your Employees
Instead of using an annual review as an attempt to build trust with your employees, this should be something you do on a regular basis. Thankfully, it’s quite easy to build and maintain trust with your team. Regularly giving feedback and avoiding any micromanagement tendency are two very simple ways to help build trust in your company.
Provide Feedback Regularly & Consistently
An annual review is not the only time that an employee should hear feedback from you. Rather, you should be providing them constructive feedback (critique or praise) while projects are happening. Not only will this help keep employees motivated, but this allows them to improve upon skills right away and instead of wasting time to hear it in a formal annual review discussion. Whether you hold quick meetings throughout the year, or send emails when you have feedback to share, you should definitely give your employees regular feedback.
As in every strong relationship, clear, honest communication is vital.
