If a member on your team needs a little direction, you need to tell them. Just the same, if someone is doing fantastic work and you’re pleased with their performance, they need to be told too. In fact, everyone needs direct feedback from their superiors in the form of an employee review – whether they’re doing great, not-so-great, or somewhere in between.

That’s not to say these performance reviews are only beneficial for the members of your team and not you or other managers; they are! It is a manager’s job to make sure all employees meet or exceed expectations, but this is impossible without setting benchmarks. Conducting employee reviews allow managers to assess individual and team productivity, see where there is room for growth, and hear directly from employees what aspect of their job they’re happy with and what they feel should change.

What Are Employee Reviews?

Before we go further into why they're so important, let's take a step back and look at what they are in the first place. An employee review is when a manager and an employee meet to discuss the employee's performance. These are commonly held annually, but may happen on other occasions, such as quarterly, when an employee’s 90 day probationary period ends, or after an incident involving Human Resources. 

Employee reviews are your chance to provide strategic vision, establish organization-wide goals, clarify team objectives, set up expectations, and help your individual employees improve. Employees learn what their key strengths are and where they should focus their development efforts. This is why your employees need them.

But, what about you? After you’ve gone over a few KPIs regarding their performance, conclude the review by asking questions. This is a fantastic way to make the employee feel engaged, valued, empowered, and certain of your expectations. Ask them if they have questions about their role, your role, or anything else that may be concerning them. Employee reviews create a safe and healthy space for discussion, allowing you to find out more about the needs and goals of the team members you supervise. Are they happy? If not, is there something you can do to help? These one-on-one conversations serve as a stopping point to make sure that tough, sometimes uncomfortable feedback is given the proper focus rather than ignored until it becomes a larger issue.

Why Employee Reviews Matter

This isn't an interrogation of your team. People need to feel as if they matter to a team and a larger organization. They want to hear where they’re doing well, even if these compliments also come with a few areas of critique.

Remember, the reviews aren’t just you talking at them; they’re a conversation. Employee reviews are a way to gauge interest and engagement, and to ensure any grievances about the current work environment are heard. In this way, they go a long way towards improving your employee retention numbers. 

Don’t take it from us, though. There are hard numbers to back this all up. Deloitte found quite a few things that may interest you. Companies that conduct effective performance reviews are:

• 30% more likely to meet their financial target 
• 3x as likely to manage change successfully
• 2.2x more likely to improve efficiency
• 1.7x more likely to delight customers
• 3.7x more likely to address workforce development needs
• 2.7x more likely to have an engaged workforce

Let’s pause and talk about that last one for a minute. That is a big, big deal! An engaged team is a team that works collaboratively, solves problems together, is happier, and more productive. Because of that, they're more likely to remain at the organization longer. Employee reviews make for more engaged-team members, and more-engaged team members are happy – happy enough to stay at your organization for years to come. The opposite side of this equation is poor retention and the associated costs of replacing your employees. Gallup reports that, "the cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee's annual salary." That will add up quickly.

You want to keep your team intact for as long as possible. A brand new employee will never be able to be as productive and handle problems that arise the way a seasoned veteran can. For this reason, an engaged team is better for everyone, including you. 

SubItUp Makes the Entire Employee Review Process Easier

If you've ever put an employee performance review together then you know it takes time to do it right. Most of the time your data is in different places too. You need to use your HR software to grab employee information, your time clock to look at punctuality, your schedule to see the shifts they worked. Then, you have to reference that information as you build that employee's review. That might take you hours, even days, spending time between two monitors, app switching, requests to others with access to HR software, and other steps. This is where SubItUp streamlines the process.

SubItUp builds employee reviews for you, aggregating staff performance data like: 

• Average shifts worked per month
• Monthly earnings
• Certification statuses and upcoming expirations
• Attendance records and time clock data
• Add/drop/swap shift history

Our review wizard let's you choose the type of review you want to give - is it focused on growth, providing positive feedback, measuring staff performance - and walks you through the steps to build a quality review. Our system enables you to not only provide constructive feedback to your staff but also directly schedule a time to meet with the employee based on their work schedule. Once the employee review is complete, it is saved to the employee profile so managers with proper permissions can access it. This way, you will always have a sense of that employee's performance and growth track.

This is only the beginning of how we make managers happier and save more time.

Let's chat about how we can make your workday easier. Reach out today for a scheduling assessment to see if your organization is a good fit for our software. Go ahead, make your managers happy!