It’s important for companies to continually communicate with employees to let them know how they’re doing and where they may be going with the company. When you speak with them you help boost performances by offering feedback and reviews. Sadly, many HR professionals aren’t taught how to properly give reviews to employees. Here are the top ten mistakes managers and HR professionals make while doing annual reviews:
1. Emphasize on the Negative. It’s important when giving a review to give credit where credit is due. So, this means you want to avoid focusing on the negatives an employee has had throughout the year. When you focus on the bad things it’s nearly impossible to help encourage employees to do better as they will feel ashamed and probably pretty humiliated.
2. Emphasize on the Positive. And though it’s important to give credit where credit is due- you don’t want to overdo it. No individual is perfect at their job, which means there is always room to grow and learn. You want to be sure that let them know where they’re doing an excellent and where the areas are that could use some improvement.
3. Be Vague. Being specific is very important to your employee. Simply saying, “You’ve had a great year. Thanks, see ya” definitely isn’t going to cut it. You need to let them know specifically what they did last year that was fabulous for the company and still let them know what they did that they could improve, while still being specific.
4. Doesn’t Request Self-Evaluation. Before you speak with an individual you should let them write out how they think they did in the past year and let them grade themselves. If people know where they need to work on then it doesn’t need to be pressed in the meeting. However, some people are oblivious. They may think they’re doing great all the way around but they may actually be doing very poorly. You need to know where they think they are before you squash their hearts.
5. Doesn’t Offer Constructive Feedback. Above we spoke about not being too negative and yet staying away from too positive also. It’s important when giving reviews that if someone has had issues with something in the past that you offer constructive feedback. Something like, “Well sure, maybe your first presentation wasn’t very good, but you know now what to expect next time and you can be more prepared. Besides, it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
6. Only Speaking to Employees at Their Review. Yes, annual reviews exist. No, this does not mean this is the only time you need to speak to employees either with a compliment or issue. It’s refreshing when a boss can recognize hard work and give it attention. And it’s more difficult for an employee to correct their wrongs if they have been consistently doing it without being told not to.