Fourth in the list of big performance review mistakes, according to Eric Jackson on Forbes.com, is lack of preparation – doing appraisal meetings “on the fly.” Eric says he “knew one boss that would drive around with his sales guys and give them feedback from the passenger seat on long road trips.”
Now obviously you wouldn’t do that – but even if you have plenty of time to spare in your busy schedule, how much of it is dedicated to preparing the background information and support materials for each of your reports?
There’s an air of change surrounding the whole topic of annual reports at the moment: some commentators are saying they just have to be replaced by something more useful, but others think the idea of an annual audit is so embedded in large organisations’ culture that ‘they’ will never let it go. One way to reconcile these positions is to make the annual reviews more flexible and more useful ,to turn them into genuine development exercise that continues through the year, not just an annual box-tick. This will, of course, entail doing the necessary preparation – but we’ve already established that there’s no time for that…
If this is where you are, help is at hand. WeThrive will take over the background work, looking into the needs and abilities of your staff and prioritising their issues for you. It’s a fully online service, all you have to do is paste the emails of your team and hit send, and you will be able to go into a review meeting with an all-round view of what’s working well and where the quick gains are for the next year.
Staff will know you know about them, their abilities and their needs, and you will benefit too – not just in time saved but from the feeling that you are doing something really useful in the annual review process. Try WeThrive free of charge – and don’t forget to download the tip sheets and other free resources to make the review process work better for all concerned.
