Performance Reviews Shouldn’t be a “One and Done” Exercise

Employers and employees agree that managing performance processes have become check-the-box exercises. Although both groups typically understand the value in having performance discussions on a regular basis, many people perceive the actual process (typically a cursory annual review) to be ineffective.

This is especially important to millennials who are exponentially shaping tomorrow’s workforce. More than one-in-three American workers today are millennials (those who were ages 20-36 in 2017), and they have recently surpassed Generation X to become the largest share of the workforce.

And those millennials are high touch.

It may have been possible to ignore their need for continuous feedback in the past, but those days are over. According to HR guru Michael Heller given the choice, 44% of millennials say they expect to leave their current employers in the next two years.

Why? Lack of feedback.

“I definitely think that people want to get away from the annual review.  They want more frequent feedback, they want to know how they are doing more often,” said Marcy Fluevog, HR manager at Proliant.   “They want to feel like they are important to the success of company.”

Millennials come from the era of the Internet: for them, immediacy is everything. They don’t like surprises and they don’t like having to wait to find out how they’re doing. They want to know: How am I doing? What are my weaknesses? Is there anything I could be doing better?

Whether a millennial employee’s work product is excellent or poor, if you wait a year to give constructive feedback or recognize good work, you’re going to lose them.

It’s easier for managers too. “It’s better for the company to do it more frequently than having massive amounts of paperwork to sort through at one point during the year,” said Fluevog.

“If my manager reviews me once a year, how much is he really going to remember everything that happened that entire year,” added Kelly Pensmith, marketing manager at Proliant. “Frequent feedback can help managers keep a loose, running tab of everything that’s happening,” she said.

Whether it’s a chat with an employee as you stop by their desk, or a formal raise request, performance recognition should be a daily part of work life.

As with many things in today’s workplace, technology comes to the rescue when it comes to collecting data, organizing it into meaningful, bite-sized chunks, which allowing for useful reporting.  If you haven’t done so already, check out the features of today’s modern performance management technology, and see how it can fit into your company’s HR best practices.