There’s never a bad time for performance evaluations. However, performance evaluations can be frustrating and worrisome for both the recipients of the performance reviews, as well as those administering them. Here are 5 tricks for improving your performance evaluation process.
- Evaluate yourself first. Some companies include a self-assessment portion of the evaluation process. Whether your company includes that step or not, it’s worthwhile to take the time to evaluate yourself for several reasons—to know how you’ve progressed from your own perspective, to have a comparison of how your own perspective compares to your manager’s perspective of your progress, and to set a baseline for the progress you should strive for in upcoming years.
- Realize that most managers don’t enjoy doing performance reviews just as much as you may not enjoy receiving them. This doesn’t mean that managers don’t like giving feedback, but the bureaucratic process of performance evaluations can be tedious and time consuming. There are two things that you can do to help with them with this process to avoid the possibility of rushing through it or cutting corners. One is related to the previous point—remember that self-evaluation you did ahead of time? It may be beneficial to share that effort with your manager: a rundown of goals accomplished and left to be accomplished, strengths you’ve utilized and ones you’d like to utilize in the future, etc. The second thing you can do is actually point number three.
- Let your manager know that you’re looking forward to your evaluation, not dreading it. Another reason managers may not get too excited about performance evaluations is because they may think the process is nerve-wracking for employees. Giving them confidence that you’re excited about your evaluation immediately makes the evaluation more pleasant for the person charged with giving it to you.
- Start planning for your evaluation from the first day of your company’s evaluation period. Making a year-long plan for your performance—goals and quarterly milestones to track your progress—will help with your self-evaluation and give you a better chance of meeting goals and an easier self-evaluation process.
- Ask colleagues to give you feedback as well. The more perspectives you have on your annual progress, the easier it is to consolidate all that information into an accurate representation of your performance, which you can share with your manager.
Performance evaluations don’t have to be dreadful or stressful. It is important to give and receive performance feedback. Since it’s nothing short of a mandatory process, it is worthwhile for your manager and yourself to do what you can to move the process along with ease.
A great tool for evaluating employee performance is with employee assessments. Check out Talexes’ suite of assessments for every level of the employee lifecycle by visiting our assessments page.
