Often during employee reviews, tensions are high. People get nervous when they are being judged. Even when an employee has shown great growth since the last review, they may still be on edge. When this happens, the employee may only tell you what they think you want to hear. They may gloss over issues or downplay areas for growth because they think it will reflect negatively on them.

Stop the cycle of bland employee reviews. Here is the secret to getting the truth from your employees.

The first key to a good review is to work with specifics. Numbers, percentages, facts and figures are all black and white. There is no emotion here. Performance metrics are numbers which an employee should be familiar with. They should know what their goal was for the month and they should know whether or not they hit this goal.

Starting out with specifics gets the review off on the right foot. This indicates to the employee that you are looking to stick to the facts. When working with numbers, you can get honest feedback about how they reached their goal or what they feel is lacking when trying to achieve their goals.

Employee reviews may only happen once a month, once a quarter or once every six months. This leaves a long time in between. Ask for feedback often from your team. Are the learning objectives set out for the employee something which they can master? Are they seeing an increase in performance? Are they gaining confidence?

Being in charge of HR, you may not see everyone on a daily basis. Therefore, it is important to push for feedback so that you can see how the employee is developing and build a sense of trust between you two.

Employee reviews are wonderful if they generate an increase in performance. However, if a review is given and then there is no follow up, does it matter? The employee needs to know that the things which you have discussed are important. Meeting with them once or twice a week to touch on the goals which were set out shows that attention is being paid. They will know that they are valuable, performance will increase and trust will be built.

Bring it back around. With 360 feedback pros and cons, you are looking at performance from every angle. Observing reportable numbers, getting feedback and following up on performance brings it back to the employee every time. With the proper templates and forms, everything will be easy to document. As time passes, the employee will see a consistent record is being kept and trust will be built. In the end, it all comes back to them. From reviews to performance, the employee is the key to the team.

Glad you asked! Grapevine Evaluations has helped countless companies with their employee evaluations, where both management and employees benefit from the feedback. Take a tour of our product, or request a one-on-one demo, and start building trust and increased performance on your team today.