Performance Review Definition
What Is a Performance Review
Performance review is like employee evaluation in which a manager conducts a formal assessment to evaluate their overall work performance. The purpose of a performance review is to offer feedback to employees, identify their strengths and weaknesses and set objectives and goals for the future.
When done right, performance reviews have the potential to bring about a plethora of benefits for a company or an organization.
Understanding Performance Review
Performance review is also known by other names, such as performance appraisal and performance evaluation. It’s an extremely important tool for every business, given how it can empower employees, help them achieve bigger goals and objectives and identify potential areas of growth, progress and improvement.
There are many reasons why performance reviews play such an important role in the whole performance management process that include the following:
- It gives employees a great insight into their strengths, weaknesses, what they are doing right and also what they could possibly be doing wrong so that they can come up with plausible solutions at the earliest.
- It paves the way towards employee development, given how these reviews help managers and supervisors create proper and detailed training programs and policies that are aimed at employee development, both personal and professional.
- It significantly improves communication between managers and employees by facilitating productive and useful conversations between both of them. Performance reviews help create a system that encourages discussion between employees and managers where they get to talk about essential factors that are directly linked to the company’s overall success.
There are so many other benefits of performance reviews, but in order to achieve and experience them successfully, managers need to consider a few very important things when conducting a performance review with an employee.
- Managers should always be honest and transparent in the review process because it will help foster fruitful communication between them and the employee. They should definitely provide honest, constructive feedback, but in a way that doesn’t hurt the employee’s sentiments and that they don’t take it personally. After all, nobody in the world is perfect, and there is always some room for improvement.
- The use of pertinent and relevant examples is a key requirement of performance reviews because you are discussing areas for improvement; for instance, you need to provide clear and appropriate examples to reference.
- Be careful with your words and pay attention when phrasing the evaluations. The ultimate goal here is to provide all the feedback that you deem important, but in a way that the employee in question feels motivated to do better and work on their shortcomings. The performance review shouldn’t leave them demotivated and discouraged.
Performance reviews serve as a great motivational tool, regardless of how an employee has been performing lately. These reviews can also be used as a learning curve by employees to do better, try harder and motivate themselves to achieve greater goals and objectives. An employer’s role here is to boost employee performance by devising relevant strategies, providing constructive feedback and adding value to the business.
