I don't know about you but writing annual performance reviews when you have more than a few people reporting to you is a daunting task. Trying to remember what your employees did and how they performed (both good and bad) over the period of the year is quite difficult. If you find yourself writing very general commentary with no proof, you may run into a situation (like I have) where an employee will say to you "Why do you say that?" "What specific situations lead you to write that?" Additionally, having a performance review where an employee is surprised by their rating or worse yet, DISAGREES with your rating is not a good way to manage. Shame on YOU if your employees don't know what their rating is BEFORE you hold the performance review. After a few years of struggling through these issues, I've developed a few ways to deal with this that will make writing annual performance reviews easier and these performance reviews will be airtight.

Hold Monthly Mini Performance Reviews

Yes. Every month hold mini performance reviews. I begin these meetings with a series of questions to the employee that goes like this "How did you think you performed last month?" Followed by "Why do you say that?" Followed by "What can I do to help you?" Followed by "Why do you say that?" I ask these questions to get a sense for the level at which they PERCEIVE they are performing. I then follow their answers by rendering my opinion very mechanically. I want to be CRYSTAL CLEAR so I say this the same way each and every time with each and every employee. "Your performance last month....fill in the blank with "meets my expectations," "exceeds my expectations" or "falls below my expectations." 99% of the time, by asking the questions I've asked at the beginning, my opinion matches the opinion of the employee. On rare occasions, the employee opinion of their performance does not match mine and this becomes my opportunity to be very clear with them where they stand with me. Remember, this occurs monthly. So when the annual review conversation is held, the employee should have a very good idea of what their rating will be because we have gone through this exercise.

The second part of the meeting focuses on the future. I ask this question "what do you need to....fix or sustain....your performance?" This give you a wealth of information from the employee. Do they know what they should be doing? Do they know how to do it? Are they filling you with BS? Do they have a plan? Do they care? Once again, you can then follow this by rendering your opinion of what they should do to fix or sustain their performance. This interaction can turn into a training opportunity obviously.

Document, Document, Document

So you hold your mini monthly performance reviews, that's great. But how can you make the reviews easier to write and make them airtight? Document, document, document. This is one of the less glamorous parts of this process but a very, very important part. With every meaningful interaction you have with the employee over the course of the year, including the monthly performance reviews, you need to document what happened and save this documentation. How do you do this to make it easier on yourself? First, create a folder in Outlook for each of your employees. Second, every meaningful email you receive from or ABOUT your employee (from customers or co-workers for example) should then be filed into this folder. Remember to file both the good emails and the bad emails.

When you've observed your employee doing something (good or bad), write yourself a quick email documenting this observation while it's fresh in your mind. Something as quick as "Ian on call with prospect. Answered objection without isolating the objection first. Got off call without establishing next steps for future interation." That's it. Took me 15 seconds to write. Now you have a date and timestamped interaction filed in your employee's folder that you can pull out later and LITERALLY cut and paste into their annual performance reviews with the email headers and everything. Cut and paste! If you do this enough times over the year, you're actually writing the review as you go.

Of course, the monthly performance reviews are critical to an airtight performance review. Again, when you're meeting with your employee and asking them questions and rendering your opinion (meets expectations, falls below expectations or exceeds expectations) you should be taking notes of this in front of the employee using your notepad or writing an email to yourself. Then when the meeting is over, if you haven't already written an email to yourself, you write a quick email to yourself about the content of the monthly performance review meeting. It can be as simple and cryptic as this:

Subject Line: Monthly Performance Review: Joe Schmoe April 2009
Date: Thu, 5 April 2009 18:08:38 -0800

Meets expectations (employee agrees)
Wants me to spend more time in the field with them
Wants to role play their opener (put 7am once per week on calendar to do this)
Feels they are not being effective at getting in front of the decision makers. Not sure why.

That's it. Don't go overboard on this unless you're dealing with a very serious issue. If you do this at least 12 times per year, you'll see so many patterns and be able to document strengths and areas for improvement. With that you can see progress or stagnation over the year and be able to write a very good performance review with very little effort at the point in which you have to write the performance review.

If you follow my process above, your employee will always know where they stand with you. They will never be surprised by an annual review you give them. The review will be filled with lots of proof of your assertions (HR loves this). The review won't take you much time to write because you'll be cutting and pasting your documentation into the review. Best of all, if you're trying to get your employee a promotion, a raise or making a recommendation for termination, you have multiple instances of documentation that help prove your case.

Kevin Gaither is a highly motivated, seasoned, hands-on sales executive with a 15+ year track record of consistently exceeding sales goals, building highly motivated, energized and productive sales teams, and excelling at developing new business. Kevin Gaither is a highly independent, assertive, creative and confident self-starter who thrives in a fast-paced and entrepreneurial company. Kevin Gaither has the proven ability to recruit, hire, train, retain and develop top-ranked sales teams by clearly articulating objectives using analytical thinking, reference to facts and best practices. Kevin Gaither has excellent leadership, prioritization, communication and analytical skills. Kevin Gaither has the ability to develop and clearly articulate objectives using both analytical thinking, reference to facts and best practices.

No one can do a job unless they understand what that job is. And no one can improve unless the boss lets them know how they are measuring up to the position's responsibilities.

Informal recognition and feedback is useful. But to maximize your employees' output, it's good business to create an official performance review system and then use it. To put together your performance review policy, give some serious thought to:

1. What are the specific requirements of the various jobs in your business.
2. How you are going to present evaluations to your employees.
3. What you want to say to improve and motivate your workers.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Determine the jobs and their duties

A performance policy should ideally facilitate and promote improvement of both your workers and your company's operational structure. If you have a company manual (or even just an org chart) you likely will have a foundation for the types of jobs your business has and what is expected.

I recommend: Get started by reviewing other companies' performance policies. Check out these overviews from Child Care Ontario and the University of Michigan library system, as well as this nice table format review. Also take a look at the various types of job-performance appraisals. Performance Appraisal Forms offers a synopsis of the four most popular methods. And Michigan State University's sample performance review letters give you an idea of what you should be looking for in a worker, as well as what you don't want to see on the job.

Put it on paper

Once you decide upon your performance system, then it's time to actually do the employee evaluations. Much like doing your taxes, the paperwork is as big a hassle as the actual review. Don't reinvent the wheel. Use a template.

I recommend: Success Factors, HRN Management Group and Performance Appraisal Forms each have standardized forms that also allow you to customize to suit your company and specific positions. Prices range from just under $40 to $795.

Find the right words

A form won't do you much good if you don't have the proper words to fill in the blanks. You want to be clear and precise, and set a tone that motivates and encourages as well as corrects any problems.

I recommend: You can get the right phrases by downloading Market Communications' 1,000 Bullet Points for around $25 or buying the book "2,600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews" for $10.95.

Give employees a chance to be heard

Build into your review process at least two face-to-face meetings between the manager and employee, one before and one after the manager writes the official review.After all, a review is just a communication device, as much for the employee as the manager.Hear the employee's side of the story before the written review and check for understanding after presenting the review.

I recommend: BusinessTown gives you a script for a productive performance-review meeting.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Run your review policy by your legal department to ensure that it meets labor law standards.
• •  Once your review policies are in place, follow them for every employee. Fair and equitable evaluations are crucial to ensure against charges of favoritism and potential wrongful termination lawsuits.
• •  Use the annual review not simply as judgment mechanism, but also as a way to improve both your workers' skills and how your company integrates those skills into the overall business operation.
• •  Remember that a performance review should be more than a dreaded annual task. A thoughtfully designed review can increase worker productivity, enhance company morale and increase your business profits.