Motivate Employees with the Performance Review Process – Part 2

By jamie | April 27, 2010 | BPM, Solutions

In my previous post, I mentioned three ways to motivate employees with a well-designed performance review process.  Here are three additional ways to make sure that performance evaluations help employees to succeed:

4.  The performance review process should be balanced: Encourage managers to provide a fair evaluation; balance critiques with constructive suggestions, negative feedback with praise, and manager-generated evaluations with the employee’s own self-assessment.  A purely negative evaluation will dishearten, rather than motivate the employee, while a purely positive evaluation leaves the employee without suggestions for improvement or direction for further growth. All employees have areas of strengths and weaknesses, so be sure to incorporate both into the evaluation process.

5.  The performance review process should be serious: It goes without saying that the performance reviewer should be honest with the review-ee, and vice-versa.  But at times performance evaluations can be awkward or uncomfortable, not only for the review-ee but also for the reviewer.  Some mangers treat performance reviews as a waste of time, as if they are punishment for “bad” employees and the “good” employees don’t need to take them seriously.  So it’s important that the HR department establish that the performance review process is an important opportunity to learn and grow while receiving valuable feedback.  A manager who skips through a “light” review is not doing the employee any long-term favors.

6.  The performance review process should be related to tangible incentives:  Employees often anxiously await performance review time, because evaluations often go hand-in-hand with raises.  While some would argue that financial pressures can distract from the spirit of the performance review itself, the fact remains that employees can be greatly motivated by tangible incentives.

In these tough financial times, offering raises or bonuses may not always be feasible.  But in addition to financial incentives, employers can get creative as to the non-monetary incentives they offer, including public and private recognition / attention / praise, opportunities for training / travel / seminars, and offering promotions/leadership opportunities to those who have earned them.