With three separate performance review projects I have been reminded of one of the great benefits of reviewing performance. Often, performance appraisal projects focus on objective setting and development plans. But, one of the key reasons that employee’s want performance reviews is to give them the opportunity to discuss the past year and what they’ve done well.
There is a real tendency to skip over this – both in the performance appraisal meeting and in the documentation that supports the meeting. But, is it too much to ask of a manager that they take a bit of time to review what has gone well and give praise where it is due?
In a recent exercise on working out the employee objectives for a performance appraisal process there was a passionate argument from those contributing to ensure that the opportunity to talk about what went well in the day-to-day job in the past year was recorded and valued. To my own discredit it took a number of people saying this for the message to get home properly.
Brendan
