Top employers have started abandoning the annual review process in favor of continuous or real-time reviews to provide employees with an assessment of their performance. As businesses focus on teams and become less hierarchical, many are streamlining annual reviews and using software to encourage constant feedback and coaching. According to a recent LinkedIn article, the move away from annual reviews to continuous performance cycles is one of the biggest non-digital HR trends for 2017. The annual review process is falling from favor and viewed as cumbersome and expensive. Traditional performance reviews have not been found to improve the overall performance of an individual employee or an organization.
For many employees, this has to be good news. The annual review was a source of anxiety and dread for many. However, the experience of having regular ongoing conversations about performance and career goals can also be a challenge.
Here are some best practices to keep in mind when participating in a conversation about performance:
1. Ask questions. Be prepared to ask leading questions to get direct and constructive feedback. Look back at your major accomplishments since the last performance meeting and ask specifically what worked and what didn’t.
2. Be willing to adapt. Show your manager that you have a willingness to change. If you are frustrated about a less-than-satisfactory outcome from a project or task, ask for feedback and then make a commitment to changing the way you do the job.
3. Seek feedback. Even if you have regularly scheduled conversations about performance, it doesn’t mean that you can’t seek out real-time feedback on a current task or project. Informal check-ins can be a very constructive way of making small corrections in performance.
4. Be open to advice. A performance review – whether it is a once-a-year experience or something you do several times a year – involves critical discussion and requires the individual to prepare mentally and emotionally to engage in a discussion about areas of improvement