headerLinks

Why Are Some Companies Walking Away From Traditional Performance Reviews?

What is the Cost of Not Running Performance Reviews?

Employees get insight into how they are doing: While senior employees might have a pulse, junior or new staff often crave a better understanding of how their work is being perceived. This feedback can act as a north star that provides guidance and direction for the employee.

Identify areas for improvement: performance reviews provide an opportunity for managers to help their direct reports identify strengths as well as gap areas, where they can focus attention for the future. It can also help you share methods they can improve and give them a clear path forward.

Improve motivation: revisiting the company’s broader purpose, values, and goals can remind staff why they’re passionate about working for and with you. It can also establish more trust, and these feelings of safety can improve sentiment about the company.&nbsp;

Clarify their role and expectations: particularly for remote workers, reviews can be an opportunity to revisit and even revise their job description to better suit your evolving business. It offers leaders the chance to add or remove responsibilities as it makes sense.

Give them an opportunity to provide feedback: the annual review is a chance for team members to share their thoughts, too. For instance, they can be candid about what they like, what could be improved, and where they hope to grow. This can help them feel empowered and heard, cultivating a workplace of which they want to be a part.

Transparency into performance and employee motivation: managers gain insight into how employees are doing, as well as the employee’s perception of their performance: their goals, accomplishments, strengths, and areas for growth.&nbsp;

Improve ongoing communication: reviews can be a safe channel for sharing bidirectional feedback. This open dialogue can encourage the team member to be more communicative in daily work.

Increase engagement: when staff have clear, measurable KPIs, they’re more likely to feel engaged in their work. It can help keep them on track and improve clarity around their daily responsibilities.&nbsp;

Learn what motivates individual employees and improve retention:&nbsp; everyone is driven by different goals and desires. Performance reviews allow you to better understand what uniquely motivates each team member, helping you to structure goals, KPIs, and projects around this and improve retention.&nbsp;

Build empathy and high-quality relationships: these instances offer a rare opportunity to gain insight into your employee’s perception of their work, what they like, and what they find challenging. This can help to build your empathy as a leader, and&nbsp; analyze their performance in a more nuanced, holistic way.&nbsp;

It may inhibit an employee’s growth. In the annual model, employees are hearing their evaluation for the first time in that single instance, and won’t check in until the following year. By that point, the areas of improvement may have long been addressed, and other areas more suited to the discussion. Conversely, if they haven’t made progress in certain improvement areas, 12 months is a long time to wait to address that.

Their role might have evolved. Especially in a startup, a team member’s role can grow and change quickly as they adapt to shifting priorities. Holding reviews only once per year can be counterproductive, since the employee may feel they’re being reviewed on projects or tasks that are no longer relevant.

The time gap might harm the employee’s ongoing motivation. If the performance review is the only opportunity an employee has to realign with values and share with you what they’re most excited about, a year can feel incredibly long before having that forum again. This can lead to them feeling bored or unengaged.

It limits the feedback leaders get. Getting feedback from your team is a key way of improving company culture. Without regular feedback from team members - who may be hesitant to share their feedback unprompted - you miss out on the opportunity to improve the company.

Formal Performance Reviews vs Informal Check-Ins

Should You Run Reviews for Contractors as Well as Permanent or Full-Time Staff?

How to Prepare for Performance Reviews with Remote Developers

#1 What Elements Will Define the Way You Will Evaluate Your Team?

Will you measure performance based on concrete goals and accomplishments, progress towards company KPIs/metrics, or both?

What elements (e.g. technical abilities, domain knowledge) will you use to evaluate staff in various departments, roles, and seniorities?&nbsp;

Will soft skills (e.g. collaboration, team communication, etc) be part of the overall evaluation?

#2 What Manager is Most Appropriate to Conduct Each Review?

#3 What Metrics Have You Been Able to Measure at This Point?

Story points released per month: in the context of Scrum, “story points” represent how complex a task is compared to another in the backlog. Calculating a developer’s story points for a given timeframe can help you assess their performance and efficiency.

Number of QA cycles before approval: quality assurance is an expensive process, so minimizing the number of QA loops required during development is important. This can give you insight into a developer’s attention to detail, commitment to code quality, and how thorough they are.

Number of bugs in production: Bugs or defects in production environments can indicate that logic behind the code isn’t sound or insufficient testing in various scenarios. While this can be a hard metric to track, it is arguably the most relevant.&nbsp;

#4 How Have You Been Assigning Tasks to Your Team Members?

How We Conduct Performance Reviews at Scalable Path

The desired outcome of the review and main takeaways.

What will be discussed in this meeting: raises, promotions, lay-offs, bonuses, etc.

Develop an action plan for each person evaluated.

Set the agenda and communicate to the team members.

Gather evidence and concrete examples that can help people to improve.

What Do We Mean When We Talk About Having an Action Plan?

Start by listing their strengths and key accomplishments. This list immediately provides context and allows us to visualize the bigger picture by understanding how this person has contributed to the organization and can continue to do so.&nbsp;

List areas that need improvement. Here, we’re able to advise and communicate our expectations, as well as establish a forum to understand how individual team members feel about their role, goals, and the feedback given. This includes whether this person feels they can commit to accomplishing them and what this person needs to get there.

Develop a plan to get things on track. This is the last part of this preparation phase. At this point, we work on a plan to help each team member get exactly where we want them to go. This is a tacit agreement where you both commit to this growth path and plan ahead.

B) Get Employees to Complete a Self-Assessment

What 2-3 items do you think were your biggest accomplishments since [last review period]?

How could your manager/team better support you to reach your goals?

Are there any skills you don't feel like you're using in your current role?&nbsp;

Back-end Developers

Front-end Developers

Mobile Developers

How to Run Performance Reviews for Remote Developers

Looking to hire?

Join our newsletter

Read Next

3 Skills to Become a Great Product Owner [Role and Responsibilities]

An Introduction to Scrum: Roles, Ceremonies, and Processes for Agile Teams

A 5-Phase Comprehensive Checklist for Onboarding Developers

Let's work together on your next software project