Performance Reviews

As you and your employees meet for performance reviews and determine goals for the upcoming year, you might hear the comment, "I want to improve my communication skills." What exactly does this mean? Do they mean interpersonal communication, leadership skills, presentation skills, foreign accent modification, or what else?

This is the perfect opportunity to open a discussion about your employee's ability to communicate effectively. Do they lack confidence about their grammar skills, do they have pronunciation challenges due to a foreign accent, or are they looking to sound more confident and powerful? Training opportunities to address these issues abound. Once the gates open to this conversation, be prepared to suggest ways to address these goals.

As supervisors, managers, and HR professionals, you must effectively communicate with your employees within this discussion. This includes not only asking the right questions, but providing a plan of action to systematically achieve success.

Sharon Armstrong,  of  Sharon Armstrong and Associates, answers a question about Performance Planning and she provides SMART suggestions.  

Question: Don't all employees need to know the specific work they are to accomplish (objectives), their supervisor's expectations for accomplishing that work (performance standards), and what behaviors they are required to show in carrying out their work on a day-to-day basis?

Answer: Absolutely!  And this is done through the use of Operational Objectives. Operational Objectives define the specific functional work that employees are to accomplish during the performance review period:  what to do, expected results, and due dates.  Objectives should reflect core job duties in addition to special projects. 

To write a complete objective, the objective should be SMART.

Check out more information about these SMART objectives here.