Year-End Performance Reviews: Is Praise Alone Enough?

As the fourth quarter approaches, it's time to evaluate the performance of employees within the company. As a manager, do you find yourself feeling uncertain about this process and situation? In addition to setting job goals, managers also need to reward outstanding employees and identify their blind spots for improvement, offering appropriate advice.

By knowing how to effectively utilize the performance evaluation mechanism to communicate, you can help your team develop further. Refer to this article by Aniday for guidance!

The Purpose of Performance Evaluation

Every fourth quarter, HR and managers alike have an important task to fulfill: performance evaluation. The purpose of performance evaluation is to assess the contributions of departments and employees within the company, serving as the basis for salary adjustments and bonuses.

Furthermore, it is also an essential opportunity for managers and employees to exchange information, understand the progress of work completed during the past year, discuss job goals for the upcoming year, and help employees overcome work challenges by providing advice. This allows the team to develop together.

Performance evaluation goes beyond mere compliments and rewards. 

Many managers believe that simply evaluating performance for everyone is good and that only with positive evaluations can effective encouragement be achieved. Of course, recognizing the contributions of each individual is the primary responsibility of a manager, but if one cannot differentiate the level of contribution of each person and cannot identify the weaknesses of subordinates to help them progress, it will cause outstanding employees to leave.

In the process of working, I have been fortunate to encounter good managers. Since I was a new employee, the managers I met were always willing to point out blind spots in my work, highlighting areas where improvement would make the job smoother. It is thanks to this that I have been able to develop quickly in my career.

Initially, when faced with such criticism, I had a bit of resistance and felt that the criticism was too abstract. However, my managers always provided specific examples of colleagues with corresponding skills to help me understand how I could perform better. After careful consideration, I was able to easily confront my weaknesses and learn from my colleagues to improve.

Furthermore, managers also need to progress together. Managers can point out the weaknesses of subordinates, but managers themselves also have their own weaknesses. If managers can also improve their own weaknesses, then the morale of subordinates will also be elevated.

Opening up an effective cycle.

Through these methods, when employees surpass the new employee stage, they will also develop the ability to self-observe and learn. At that point, you can encourage employees to learn from those in higher positions about how to perceive and solve problems.

Based on my observation, what employees can learn from managers has a significant impact on whether they choose to stay or not. I once encountered an exceptional middle-level director in terms of how he handled tasks, logic, and problem-solving skills. He was always ready to show us more effective ways of working during the process. Despite the difficulties and pressures of the job, I stayed with this company for many years.

In summary, although the performance evaluation process is quite complex, if you are already doing it, don't turn it into a mere formality. Instead, genuinely communicate and train employees. Performance evaluation has gone through many years of development, from PDCA to KPI, then to OKR, and currently OGSM, all of which emphasize the importance of setting specific goals. One of the keys to achieving these goals is effective communication.

Therefore, don't wait until the performance evaluation to conduct checks, but always maintain effective communication so that issues within the department can be identified and addressed. We hope this article from Aniday will be helpful to you.