As a business owner, performance reviews just feel like something you should do, right? At the end of the year, you should sit down with your employees, give them feedback on the job they have done, and give them goals for the upcoming year. But who has time to do that? And do performance reviews work? Are you even doing them correctly? The process itself can be a bit daunting, but if you are doubting the effectiveness of employee performance reviews (and how to conduct them), our goal today is to help! Truth be told, there is no absolute right way to facilitate an employee performance review, but they are helpful to both the employee and the business as a whole.
These reviews are an opportunity for you to engage your employees and statistics show this can have a huge impact on your business. After all, the majority of issues businesses face are due to a lack of employee engagement. Check out these stats:
What if these numbers could be improved in our practices? As the end of the year approaches, business owners have the opportunity to change the way they engage their employees with an end of the year performance review. To do this well, giving quality feedback is key. Feedback There are two common types of feedback in most businesses: no feedback and negative feedback. This is a problem if business owners truly want to grow. Most employees navigate their jobs in total silence from upper management until things go wrong. Research shows that this type of feedback will only move someone from low performance to average performance, at best, and that only receiving negative feedback is demotivating over time. To effectively engage your employees and improve their performance, business owners have to flip the common feedback model on its head. A leader's goal should be to spend 80% of their time and energy giving positive feedback and only 20% giving constructive feedback. This is where your focus should be during annual performance reviews. One key to remember here is that things like, "You're doing a great job," are not actually feedback. That is a compliment. Provide specific examples of things your employees have done well and that you want to see them continue doing well. Then provide constructive criticism where it is applicable, but this should only make up 20% of the review process. A good formula to remember when giving feedback is SBI: Situation - Describe when and where the event took place. Behavior - Describe the specific behavior you saw or heard. Impact - Describe the impact the behavior had on you. An Example: (S) Hey Karen, do you remember when we were behind schedule last week and (B) you stayed an hour late to help me get patients through their appointments? (I) I felt that you really cared about our mission here at the practice and truly valued both our relationship and our patients. Thank you! This format can be used for praise and constructive criticism and all three aspects are important! This performance appraisal form has eight different key skills listed on it. While you shouldn't grade every employee as "Exceeds Expectations" in each category, having positive feedback for them in at least six of these categories is a healthy recommendation. Use a healthy form of constructive criticism in the two areas where your employee needs the most improvement. Once you have given specific, quality feedback to your employees, it's time to move on to goals. Goals In a famous 1979 study, researchers asked graduates of Harvard's MBA program whether or not they had set clear, written goals for their future and made plans to accomplish them. Here were the answers to the question:
In 1989, researchers followed up with those same graduates and you can probably imagine what they discovered:
It is hard to argue against the effectiveness of goal setting. As the leader of your practice, it is your job to help your employees establish goals and make sure they achieve them. You have heard of SMART goals, right? (We took a deeper dive into SMART goals in this piece.) Simple Measurable Attainable Reasonable Time-bound When goals are built based upon these five criteria, results happen! Or, they don't happen and, well, you probably know what should happen next. While the concept of SMART goals isn't that hard to grasp, it is easy to forget the importance of setting goals that meet all five criteria. But goal setting isn't a "leader only" activity. In order to effectively set goals, leaders need to bring their employees in on the process. Leaders and employees must agree that the goals are both attainable and reasonable. If this agreement isn't in place, it will be almost impossible for significant goals to be met within the business. Bring your employees in on the goal-setting process. Write out a plan for how and when they will achieve their goals, give them positive feedback, and follow up every step of the way. Follow up Often times, goals are set and then just as quickly forgotten. There is something magical and oddly satisfying about setting a goal, but the work itself is rarely as enjoyable. As a business owner, this is where you get to bring the entire picture together. Not only do you get to provide 80% positive feedback to your employees as they work to hit their goals, but you also get to meet with them monthly and quarterly to track their progress. How different would things be at your practice if this actually took place? Believe it or not, your employees need more of your time, but they also need more than your time. They need your wisdom, encouragement, and guidance to do their jobs well. Meet with your employees monthly. Make sure they are on track to meet their goals and, if they aren't, figure out what you can do to help them get on track. Have you tried this approach with your employees in the past? If so, we would love to hear how it went! Reply to this email and let us know! As always, if you have questions or comments on this piece, please reply to this email. We would love to hear from you!
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AuthorThe staff and doctors at VisionAmerica are committed to providing relevant information for you, your patients and your practice. We hope you find the information in our blog post helpful. Archives
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