Gathering Information
,Assessing an employee’s performance isn’t something you do once, a week before conducting a review discussion—it’s an ongoing process. Your information gathering, likewise, should be a part of your daily work throughout the year. To get a complete picture of your employee and fairly evaluate her work, collect information about her performance from a number of different sources.
Observe and track employee progress
Direct observation is the best way to monitor employee performance. It can help you identify strengths and weaknesses and understand the impact those capabilities will have on your employee’s ability to achieve specific goals. In a fast-paced workplace, attentive observation is especially important: If an individual is headed off track, you need to know about it early, before problems are compounded. Flagging issues when they first arise will enable you to take corrective action and help your employee get back on course.
Keep notes about your observations throughout the year so you’re not relying on memory when it’s time to do a formal assessment. It’s difficult to remember everything your employee did over the course of the year, and her most recent work is probably what’s fresh in your mind. Maybe your employee saved the day in January but made a mammoth mistake in June. When her July review comes around, which event are you more likely to recall?
Consider these two approaches for tracking employee performance:
• Keep a notebook, file, or folder on each of your direct reports handy, and update it regularly with notes on their performance. Set a reminder in your calendar to periodically add entries.
• Request short, informal monthly progress reports from each of your employees. You might specify a few topics to cover, such as key accomplishments, problems, or concerns, and what the individual plans to accomplish in the next month. The quality, completeness, and timeliness of these reports will also give you a sense of the individual’s performance.
The information you gather will help you prepare your annual evaluation, but it will also promptly alert you to problems that may be brewing as well as opportunities for coaching and direction on an on going basis. Performance reviews may happen only once a year, but the more you prepare, the less you’ll need to rush when the time comes.
If you’re facing an imminent performance review meeting and you don’t have these kinds of records at hand, use the information you do have to jog your memory about your employee’s full year of accomplishments. For example, look over your calendar appointments from the past year: You’ll be reminded of the week that Tanya impressed you by smoothly covering for her colleagues when half your team was out with the flu, or the time she botched an important presentation during a quarterly division meeting. Similarly, look through your e-mail correspondence and any meeting notes to unearth details that may have been forgotten.
Request an employee self-appraisal
As the performance review date approaches, requesting observations from the employee will also be helpful. Ask your employee to submit a self-appraisal in advance of your review session, explaining that you’ll use it to take her point of view into account during your evaluation.
Commissioning a self-appraisal has two major benefits. First, it involves the employee in the review process, which sets a tone of partnership, helps the employee remain open to your feedback, and prepares her for the face-to-face discussion. Second, it gives you another perspective on the employee’s work and any potential problems.
Your organization may have a specific selfassessment form for employees to use. If not, you can create one. Anything from a formal written report to a quick list of notes will do. The self-appraisal should address questions such as:
• What are your most important accomplishments and achievements since your last review? Has the past year been better or worse for you than previous years in this position?
• Have you achieved the goals set during your previous review?
• Have you surpassed any of your goals? Which ones? What helped you meet or exceed them?
• Are you struggling with any of your goals? Which ones? What’s hindering you from achieving them (poor direction, inadequate resources, lack of training)?
• What do you like most and least about your job?
• What do you hope to achieve in the upcoming year?
• What can your manager or your organization do to better help you succeed?
The sidebar “Theo’s self-appraisal” is an example of a document prepared by Theo, a customer service representative. In studying Theo’s responses, you can see his side of the story, including what he’s struggling with the most, why his goals may or may not have been met, and where he’s most likely to focus his attention in the upcoming year.
THEO’S SELF-APPRAISAL
What are your most important accomplishments and achievements since your last review? Has the past year been better or worse for you than previous years in this position?
Learning to use the customer database had the biggest impact on my work this year. Now that I understand the database, I’m able to process twice as many orders per day as I used to. Since I’ve been here for two years now, I can get many more things done without having to ask questions, so this year has been much better for me than the last.
Have you achieved the goals set during your previous review?
My biggest goal for the year was to improve my processing time for orders, which I’ve accomplished. Another goal was to improve my knowledge of new product lines, which I was able to do because my mentor instructed me on the new phone script and introduced me to the new products we offer. I also aimed to reduce the number of calls needed to solve customers’ problems. I’ve made progress on this, which I wasn’t able to do last year.
Have you surpassed any of your goals? Which ones? What helped you meet or exceed them?
My goal for the year was to increase the orders I process by 25%. I’ve actually doubled the amount of orders I’ve processed, thanks to the new customer database. I still have more to learn about the database (the instructional workshop I was supposed to take was cancelled), but fortunately, my colleague Siobhan walked me through the main functions. Siobhan has been a great teacher. Maybe she could do a group training on the new database—I know others are still having problems with it.
Are you struggling with any goals? Which ones? What’s hindering you from achieving them?
One of my goals was to “reduce by 10% the number of calls needed to solve customers’ problems.” I’ve been able to reduce the number of calls by 8%. I’m proud of the progress I’ve made, but I can’t do this alone. It might help if someone else on the team were also focusing on call reduction.
What do you like most and least about your job?
I love working with the team and trying new things. But a challenge for me is pacifying angry customers. I get nervous, and they throw me off script. If there’s a class or workshop on dealing with difficult customers, I’d be interested in taking it.
What do you hope to achieve in the upcoming year?
I need to continue to learn about new product lines. I’d also like to improve my ability to deal with difficult customers. And while I’ve made a lot of progress on processing orders faster, I’d like to continue to improve my speed and efficiency.
What can your manager or your organization do to better help you succeed?
Some of my team members are amazing at dealing with difficult customers; a workshop with them could be beneficial. Also, many of the training workshops have been cancelled because of low enrollment. It would help to have these workshops scheduled during weeks that aren’t our busiest so that others who are interested could attend.
Solicit 360-degree feedback
While the performance discussion itself will take place just between you and your direct report, you may find it beneficial to supplement your findings with 360-degree feedback, an approach that synthesizes many people’s perspectives of the employee’s performance.
These collective feedback reports can be timeconsuming, and people can be uncomfortable giving their colleagues a formal critical report (even if they complain about their shortcomings behind closed doors). But when done right—in an environment of trust within an organization committed to honest feedback—360s can also provide much more complete information than any single person can. If an employee’s work doesn’t bring them into contact with a large variety of people, however, a 360-degree approach may be unnecessary.
To ensure that you gather the most useful information from 360-degree feedback:
• Clarify your purpose. Explain to survey respondents and feedback recipients that the purpose of the 360 is to help assess achievements and define areas for improvement, not to amass negative feedback. It should be a constructive process, not a punitive one. Remind respondents, whether they’re peers, direct reports, or customers, that if they have ongoing concerns about their working relationship with the employee, they should address those with the individual directly as well.
• Make your criteria clear. If you’re gathering opinions on hard-to-measure qualities such as “communication skills” or “integrity,” ask your respondents for specific examples rather than a numerical rating so you can understand how they’ve interpreted these qualities. For instance, knowing that a colleague ranked Joe 5 out of 5 in communication tells you (and Joe) much less than “Joe explains project instructions clearly every time. When I have a question, he is happy to sit down with me to make sure we’re on the same page for a given assignment.”
• Diversify your pool of respondents. Ask several peers, direct reports, and internal and external customers to provide input, rather than a few people from one category, or just one person from each category. You’ll get a more complete picture, respondents will feel more comfortable responding freely, and the employee being evaluated will know that you’ve worked to gather a balanced set of data.
Collect additional resources
After you’ve solicited information from both your direct report and others in the organization, gather any remaining documents that would be helpful in determining whether an employee has improved during the past year. Some of these sources include:
• The most recent job description for the position. In a performance review you’re not assessing the quality of your employee—you’re evaluating how well this particular person performed a specific job. To identify how well she is doing, you need to first determine what it is you’ve asked her do.
• The employee’s own performance goals and development plan, as defined at her previous review session or earlier in the year. Goals serve as clear benchmarks for success, so these documents will be invaluable in assessing performance. (You’ll read more about goals and development plans in the chapter “Establishing Next Steps.”)
• The individual’s employment records, including past trainings, prior years’ evaluation forms, and notes or documentation from previous review sessions.
If you’re missing some of these items, you may need to improvise. For example, if your employee’s job description is out of date, create a new one. Begin with goals you and your employee have set together, or speak to a human resource manager to compose a current job description to share with the employee.
After you’ve gathered all the relevant information, you’ll need to analyze it and write down your evaluation of the employee. We’ll cover both of those topics in the next chapter.