Just 14% of employees believe their performance reviews catalyze improvement. One-third of the time, they do more harm than good, says Gallup. This signifies a real need to upgrade the performance review process.
Quarterly reviews are one highly effective way to change the review experience, and still benefit from the insights that performance reviews provide.
A quarterly performance review is a great compromise. It’s a happy medium between annual reviews, and no reviews. Regular reviews allow evaluation to become a more normal part of an employee’s routine. This means they feel less intimidating than an annual review. At the same time, they deliver valuable feedback.
Are you considering switching to quarterly performance reviews? Let’s explore how to get maximum results from this type of review schedule in today’s workplaces.
Table of Contents
1. Benefits of Switching to a Quarterly Performance Review
2. Getting the Quarterly Review Right: Avoid These 5 Common Mistakes
3. 3 Tips for Making Your Quarterly Performance Reviews a Success
4. How to Prepare Your Employees for a Quarterly Performance Review
5. Real-World Quarterly Performance Review Examples
6. Primalogik’s Employee Performance Review Software Can Help You Deliver Effective Quarterly Reviews
Benefits of Switching to a Quarterly Performance Review
Quarterly reviews deliver many benefits over annual reviews. It might sound like they would take more time and effort. After all, they’re held four times a year. But that actually makes them easier than annual reviews. The milestones and events you’ll be discussing will be fresh in your mind.
Benefit 1: Quarterly reviews provide detailed insights
With a quarterly review, you can more accurately look back on the review period. That means employees will receive more detailed and relevant feedback. Plus, managers will feel less stressed about preparing for them. They’ll have more candid conversations because they’ll remember key details.
Benefit 2: Quarterly reviews are in sync with company cycles
According to HBR, quarterly reviews more closely parallel organizations’ cycles of work. Projects have shorter timeframes than in past years. This also supports the case for more frequent reviews.
Benefit 3: Quarterly reviews boost engagement
Do quarterly reviews truly lead to enhanced performance and engagement? Absolutely, when done well. According to Gallup, employees are 2.7 times more likely to show high engagement when they receive frequent feedback.
Benefit 4: Quarterly reviews promote healthy career development
According to Gallup, 87% of millenials rate career development as highly important to them. It follows that managers should have routine developmental conversations. Quarterly performance reviews boost satisfaction and loyalty by supporting employees’ growth.
Getting the Quarterly Review Right: Avoid These 5 Common Mistakes
Quarterly reviews can bring plenty of benefits, but you could run into a few pitfalls if you’re not careful. Many of the common pain points of employee reviews apply to quarterly reviews as well. For now, let’s look at how to steer clear of the most common mistakes affecting quarterly reviews.
1. Making subjective evaluations
Employees need to be evaluated based on a clear set of standards. Heidi Lynne Kurter recommends using a shared resource that documents the reasons behind the input you gave. A professional performance management system, such as the one offered by Primalogik, will make this information readily available. In turn, this boosts transparency and employees’ confidence in the process. It will also help them to gauge their own progress in between reviews and guide managers to use the right criteria.
2. Not setting quarterly performance review goals
Often, annual goals become obsolete by the second or third quarter. Quarterly goals tend to be more relevant. (As we mentioned, projects today often have a tighter turnaround. Individual goals should have a similar timeframe.) In turn, evaluating progress toward quarterly goals will be more accurate.
It’s a lot harder to reflect on progress over an entire year.
3. Not considering shifts in goals
Don’t remain rigidly focused on one set of goals if the situation has changed. These days, goals can easily shift during a given quarter. Particularly in a time of disruption, agile goals are essential. Prior to the review, reflect on whether goals have changed or need to be changed in order to make a fair assessment.
Have goals changed at the individual or team level? Consider whether employees have adapted, and reward them accordingly!
4. Making comments that don’t pertain to quarterly performance review goals
Tie everything back to a goal. Off-topic statements can arguably be discriminatory. They may signal that you’re rating the employee on things that should have no bearing on the review. In some cases, they can even signify bias.
For example, comments about not “keeping up with the times” can sound ageist. Likewise, praising employees for being available 24/7 can stigmatize those who are not. Plus, it encourages burnout and doesn’t necessarily have any link to successfully accomplishing goals.
One way to avoid this mistake is by preparing a list of appropriate topics for any performance review, then adjusting them accordingly for quarterly meetings.
5. Presuming you’ll remember everything
Yes, you’ll have a better recollection of more recent events. But keeping a log of employee accomplishments and challenges remains vital. Don’t leave it to your memory—write it down! Primalogik’s performance management software includes a journal feature for taking notes, which can be easily reviewed during or prior to subsequent reviews. Taking notes during one-on-ones of any type is key to getting the most out of each conversation over the long term.
Now you know what to avoid in quarterly performance reviews. Let’s consider how to go above and beyond to make them a success.
3 Tips for Making Your Quarterly Performance Reviews a Success
There are three factors that have a major impact on the quarterly review process: equity, empathy and a feedback-sharing culture. By addressing these (and other) common challenges to the review process, you can nurture your employees’ success all year round.
Tip No 1: Promote Equity in the Quarterly Performance Review Process
What’s the number one way to enhance your review process? Support managers in promoting fairness.
Use performance evaluation software to create a well-structured review
Using a prepared template within a performance management suite will help managers to create a well-structured, balanced review. Further, it can help avoid common types of bias during the review process.
Add checks and balances to the process to catch bias.
Managers can meet and discuss employees’ competencies. This helps ensure they’re all using the same standards. If a manager rates an employee too harshly or highly, this meeting provides a reality check. Further, employees write and discuss peer reviews with one another. This provides another avenue through which to receive valuable input.
Through this system, honest feedback gets results. “We’ve found that people who receive assessments in the bottom 10% have a 36% chance of making it into the top half within a year,” write Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, and Adam Grant in HBR.
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Analyze performance review ratings for fairness.
An HR dashboard can help you visualize feedback, compare different managers’ rating styles and identify any bias so you can address it. With today’s detailed analytics, there’s no excuse for letting bias persist!
Tip No 2: Incorporate Empathy
Build empathy into the performance review process. Eighty-two percent of employees want to know their manager sees them as people, according to Gartner. They want to know you truly wish to see them grow and thrive. Convey concern for their wellbeing and personal goals in these ways:
- Check in with them about progress toward wellness goals.
- Help them find solutions to challenges like time-management struggles.
- Show your commitment to helping them achieve career goals.
- Ask about what energizes them in their work. Then, give them opportunities to do more of those things.
By taking these steps, you’ll gain their trust and loyalty. As a result, you’ll have more forthright conversations.
Tip No. 3: Create A Feedback-Sharing Culture
It is very important that you create a culture of sharing frequent feedback. In addition to the formal review, take opportunities to give informal feedback often via surveys and check-ins. Employees who receive daily feedback are 3.6 times more likely to feel motivated to do excellent work. Encourage managers to have frequent one-on-ones with employees, and ask employees plenty of questions. Holding quarterly performance reviews gives you the chance to gain valuable feedback on a regular basis, and gain more insights into your employees’ strengths, weaknesses, and efforts.
How to Prepare Your Employees for a Quarterly Performance Review
Quarterly performance reviews are a two-way street. Managers aren’t the only ones who need to prepare—employees do too. By giving them guidance on how to get ready for the review, you can help them stop worrying and learn to love performance reviews. Moreover, it will help both managers and employees get more from the process.
Leading up to a review, urge employees to learn what to say in a performance review. You can also encourage them to take the following steps:
Reflect on their distinct contributions
In an ideal world, a boss would clearly remember every one of their employee’s accomplishments. However, that’s not how the real world works.
“The idea is to show how your contributions are unique to you and valuable for the company,” says Carol Cohen, senior vice president of Cognizant, in The Wall Street Journal. “Focus on your achievements that grew revenue, cut costs or transformed a process.”
Focus on results rather than relationships and rapport
Yes, being a team player has its place, and being friends with workplace colleagues can bring positive results, according to Stephen Friedman, Adjunct Professor of Organizational Studies, Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada. But it’s even more important to emphasize concrete results.
Highlight interpersonal accomplishments, like mentoring others to success or leading a team effort. Get specific!
Brush up on manager, team and organisational goals
Being clear on which goals are being prioritised will help any employee speak to how they helped accomplish them. Employees should also consider how they might fit into new initiatives that they’ve heard about and suggest their own goals during the meeting.
Get peer feedback prior to the review
Completing a self-evaluation is a good idea, too. However, you may not perceive yourself as others do. Research shows that men tend to rate their own performance more highly than women. Get a well-rounded array of opinions on your performance. Coworkers might recall times when you really came through for them!
Taking these steps will give employees an active role in the process. They’ll go into the next quarter feeling empowered to succeed.
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Real-World Quarterly Performance Review Examples
Want to convince your leadership to get on board with quarterly reviews? Share some real-world examples of how organizations are using them. These two major companies have found great success with quarterly performance reviews.
Deloitte
Deloitte’s managers complete performance reviews at least four times per year. They consider these assessments “performance snapshots.” Managers hold them either after a project or once per quarter. To launch the conversation, they answer a short list of predetermined questions. These conversations centre on insights gained from frequent feedback and check-ins.
They use data strategically to assess performance, write Jeff Orlando and Erica Bank of Deloitte. Plus, they use frequent pulse surveys to check engagement. Managers find this quarterly conversation feels more natural and less forced.
“They’re about goals and strengths, not just about past performance,” Orlando and Bank told SHRM. “We’re likely to say something like, ‘Of course, you did a great job, but did you really like it? What kind of work inspires you?’ When people work on projects that excite them, they become more engaged and perform better.
That benefits all of us—our teams, our clients, and our organization.”
Adobe
At Adobe, managers have quarterly in-depth feedback conversations. They’ve made the process informal, omitting the written review. Adobe’s “Check In” process has even become a valuable recruitment tool. It draws in promising candidates who want more frequent developmental conversations.
And managers deliver input routinely outside of these conversations as well. Importantly, the company found managers needed guidance on how to talk to employees, including what questions to ask, and which phrases to use during reviews. Role-playing exercises can help. Consider holding workshops to help your managers practice these skills.
Primalogik’s Employee Performance Review Software Can Help You Deliver Effective Quarterly Reviews
Now you have a strong grasp of how to create and implement effective quarterly reviews to gain accurate, well-informed insights. Employees should feel like active participants in the process. As a result, trust between managers and employees will grow. Well-delivered quarterly reviews can play a key role in boosting morale and engagement. Coach managers every step of the way to ensure success!
At Primalogik, we believe that happy employees make for successful companies. Let us help you create the perfect employee evaluation. We have created a full employee performance management suite that includes a dedicated tool for Employee Performance Reviews. Enjoy the convenience of a single sign-on, fast set-up and streamlined visuals. Quickly see an employee’s history in graph format to see where improvements are needed or progress has been made. Use the journal to take notes, and set up reminders for employees to fill out surveys. It’s a complete solution for making your quarterly performance reviews a breeze! Curious to give it a try? Book a free demo today!