How Often Should You Review Your Employees?
Employee reviews are beneficial for both the employee and employer. Every employee relationship is different, and it’s important to realize that as you go through the daily grind. Reviewing your employees will also help you build that relationship and get to know your team on a deeper level.
Frequency
If you only review your employees annually, your employees may become anxious about their performance in the office. Annual reviews can either be too broad or too specific. For example, you might bring up an incident that happened 6 months ago. The employee may feel like they were left in the dark and blindsided because this situation happened months ago, and they did not realize that management was upset.
Reaction
Employees often respond defensively rather than receptively when they are only reviewed every year. It is also a challenge for management to coach effectively if the incident occurred too far in the past. You ultimately want your employees to respond with positivity and learn from these reviews. There isn’t a time to fight over situations that are water under the bridge at this point in time.
Factors to Consider
With frequency and reaction in mind, now it’s time to think about how often you want to perform your reviews. The frequency of your reviews depends on a few factors. First, you want to think about how often salary and bonuses will be discussed. You also need to look at how long it takes employees to show signs of growth and change. This may depend on each individual person, so you may consider having different review schedules for each employee depending on the size of your company. Perhaps you would rather do monthly check-ins to ensure your employee’s happiness. It’s also a possibility that you’d rather perform quarterly reviews because that works better for your team. It all depends on your company size and what works best for your employees.
Take all of the above factors into consideration and you’ll have a great review system nailed down in no time!