With remote and hybrid working environments gaining popularity, the need to rework your performance review process has become a growing priority for modern companies.

In response, 360° performance reviews have emerged as the way forward in a post COVID-19 work environment, and for good reason. With increased learning and development (L&D) opportunities and increased transparency among the many benefits of 360° performance reviews, the performance management approach is gaining popularity among HR teams and managers alike.

Here, we dive into the what, why, and how of 360° performance reviews to help you nurture engaged employees and drive business results.

What Are 360° Performance Reviews?

The 360° performance review is a comprehensive evaluation process that involves gathering feedback from multiple sources, including an employee’s supervisor, peers, direct reports, and sometimes even external stakeholders such as clients or customers.

Coming from the idea of a full-circle picture, 360° performance reviews provide a more complete picture of an employee’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as their overall impact on the organization.

360° performance reviews differ from the traditional performance review method in that it does not rely on a single manager’s observations about the performance of their direct reports. Instead, the manager also seeks feedback from the employee’s teammates and other external sources to gain a more complete, and holistic picture of their employee’s performance.

Benefits of 360° Performance Reviews

360° performance reviews equip managers with more accurate and in-depth insight into the drivers and challenges behind their direct report’s performance, which enables them to provide support more effectively where necessary.

Balanced feedback

Because the 360° performance review gathers feedback from multiple sources, it provides a well-rounded view of performance which captures a wider range of an employee’s strengths, as well as areas for improvement.

Minimized bias

360° performance reviews help minimize the possibility of performance appraisal bias by soliciting feedback from multiple sources with diverse perspectives. By gathering feedback from a range of individuals who have different relationships with the employee being reviewed, a 360° performance review provides a more objective and unbiased view of the employee’s strengths and areas for improvement. Additionally, the anonymity of feedback can help minimize the impact of interpersonal dynamics or politics that may otherwise influence the review process.

More L&D opportunities

One of the most important benefits that a 360° performance review can provide for individual employees is that it’s especially effective at identifying their opportunities for growth. With 360° performance reviews, employees receive a wider range of perspectives on their performance, skills, and behaviors. This feedback can help employees and their managers identify blind spots, highlight strengths and weaknesses, and gain a better understanding of how their actions impact others in the workplace. 

360° performance review feedback can be used to create individualized L&D plans that address specific areas of improvement, and can help employees develop new skills, refine existing ones, and improve their overall performance.

Enhanced team performance

The 360° performance review process gives managers the feedback they need to be informed about the level of employee engagement within their teams. 360° performance reviews provide valuable insight into team dynamics, and equip managers with the tools they need to address pain points and roadblocks that may be preventing teams from performing at their highest ability.

Your How-To Guide to 360° Performance Reviews

The process

1. Define your purpose and scope
   Define what you want to achieve in your 360° performance review, you could be aiming to gauge overall performance, or identify L&D opportunities. Get clear on the goal of your review, and determine what performance review questions you’ll need to ask to reach your goal. Then decide who will be participating in the review, such as the employee’s manager, peers, direct reports, and external stakeholders.
2. Select your assessment tool
   Whether in-house or through a performance management system software, assessment tools help promote a standardized approach to collecting feedback from multiple sources. Choosing the right 360° performance review tool brings clarity, efficiency, and measurability to the process.
3. Provide training and orientation
   Ensure that all participants understand the purpose of the review, how to use the assessment tool, the necessary deadlines for reviewing, and how to provide constructive feedback. Utilize performance review email templates to communicate with employees leading up to the review cycle.
4. Collect and compile feedback
   Use your assessment tool to collect and compile all feedback into a comprehensive report. Ensure that the feedback received is objective and specific.
5. Analyze
   Group similar feedback and analyze the scores and information you’ve received about your employee. Use this information to determine strengths and weaknesses, and prepare for a review with your employee.
6. Develop an action plan
   Schedule a 1-on-1 meeting with your employee to discuss their 360° performance review. Provide the employee with a copy of their review prior to the meeting and encourage them to come with any questions and solutions. Work together to develop performance review SMART goals that address the areas for improvement identified in the feedback.
7. Monitor progress
   Schedule regular check-ins with your employee to monitor their progress over time and provide ongoing support to help them achieve their goals. During your follow-up meeting, review progress and make adjustments to the action plan if necessary.

Best practices

Ensure confidentiality
Confidentiality is crucial to ensuring a fair and objective 360° performance review process. Participants should be assured that their feedback will be kept confidential and not used for any other purpose than the review.

Communicate clearly
Communicate the purpose and process of the 360° performance review to all participants, including the employee being reviewed. Ensure that they understand the assessment tool, the criteria being evaluated, and the expectations for providing feedback.

Focus on development
Emphasize that the 360° performance review is a tool for development rather than punishment. Encourage the employee being evaluated to use the feedback to identify areas for improvement and create an action plan for their development, reframing their pain points as opportunities for growth.

Standardize
Develop clear guidelines and procedures for how your 360° performance reviews will be conducted, including how feedback is collected, how the report is compiled, and how feedback is presented to the employee being evaluated. This helps to ensure that the process is consistent, fair, and transparent, and helps to minimize the potential for bias, ensuring all employees are evaluated according to the same criteria.

Useful tools

Performance management tools
Performance management tools such as Omni can help to streamline the review process by automating feedback collection, compiling feedback into easy-to-follow reports and analytics, and generating engaging action plans for employee development. 

Omni helps automate and streamline the 360° performance review process to create a standardized, informative, and constructive review cycle that motivates employees and produces actionable insights for managers and HR teams. 

Templates
Consistency is one of the key drivers behind a bias-free 360° performance review cycle. And with so many competing priorities, from engaging multiple stakeholders to analyzing results, there’s no need for HR to reinvent the wheel when it comes to building 360° performance reviews. Tools like Omni’s Ultimate Performance Review Template provide easy-to-follow examples to help you create a framework to motivate and engage employees and their managers to assess their strengths and set achievable goals that contribute to a company’s success.

Coaching tools
Coaching tools, such as development plans or guides such as setting key performance indicators for employees, can be used to help managers effectively coach employees on their opportunities for growth by providing the necessary framework to form achievable goals that will improve employee performance.

Perfect Your 360° Performance Reviews With Omni

360° performance review feedback can be a powerful tool for HR teams looking to improve their employee performance management processes. Omni helps your team streamline their process and gain valuable insights into employee performance, strengths, and areas for improvement. Omni unlocks the power of automation so HR teams can build a comprehensive, standardized 360° performance review process that empowers teams and drives continuous improvement across your organization.

To learn more about how Omni can improve your 360° performance review process, book a demo with our team.

As a manager newly established in your role, one of the most important tasks you’re responsible for is the conducting of performance reviews for your direct reports.

That said, we’re sure it must feel like one of the trickiest things you’ve ever had to handle thus far, not least because it’ll involve a potentially awkward conversation with the people you work with.

And you may be worried about how you can carry out a performance review that’s fair to your direct reports, while still being effective at addressing the shortcomings in their work.

After all, isn’t it true that only 2 in 10 employees think that their companies review and manage their performance in a way that motivates them to do their best work, according to Gallup?

Still, it’s not that your direct reports don’t want feedback on their work. They just want to be sure that their assessments are fair and balanced.

Therefore, it’s critical that a new manager like yourself fully understand the factors that make for an effective performance review.

In this article, we’ll show you some of the pitfalls you should avoid as a new manager, in order to conduct effective performance reviews for your direct reports. But first, let’s look at how achieving this can be beneficial to your team and your organization.

The Benefits of Effective Performance Management

Minimizes Employee Turnover

Performance reviews can instil in your direct reports a sense of purpose, clear goals, and a plan for achieving these goals. Without these, they’re likely to feel a lack of career progress, which is a major cause of turnover.

Therefore, these performance reviews play a key role in keeping the motivation and engagement of your direct reports high, and employee turnover low.

Fosters A Culture Of Transparency And Trust

A strong company culture can only be formed upon a foundation of open communication and transparency. Performance reviews can contribute towards cultivating that culture if they’re performed regularly, and are designed to make praise, feedback and criticism a normal part of the work environment.

This would, in turn, encourage your direct reports to provide open feedback, strive towards progression in their careers, and greater collaboration with their colleagues.

Maintaining High Levels Of Morale

Giving your direct reports fair and constructive performance review can motivate them to improve, and retain a positive attitude towards their work. This can rub off on their colleagues, and contribute to an overall positive work environment overall.

Conversely, an unfair performance review can easily sour the mood of your direct reports. This can in turn set up a cascade effect, bringing down the morale of the entire team simply with their presence.

Encourages Employee And Business Development

With a well-crafted performance review, you can easily identify the individual strengths and weaknesses of your direct reports, seek out training opportunities accordingly, and build rapport with your team more easily.

Not only would this help to improve your direct reports’ performance and increase their engagement level, it could also help you build a highly engaged team, which have been shown to be 21% more profitable than their average counterparts.

Avoid These 4 Pitfalls When Carrying Out Performance Reviews

Now that we’ve seen how beneficial a fair and effective performance review can be to your organization, let’s look at some of the most common mistakes first-time managers like yourself tend to make when conducting performance reviews for the first time.

And if you’ve committed some of these mistakes, take heart in knowing that even more experienced managers do make the same mistakes from time to time.

1. Letting Your Biases Affect Performance Reviews

Unconscious biases is one of the most common mistakes that managers make when conducting performance reviews, even more seasoned ones.

Because of this, it’s important you remain aware of your own possible biases towards your direct reports. If you don’t take the necessary steps to mitigate them, they can compromise the objectivity and fairness of the performance reviews you conduct for them.

For example, you might unconsciously place higher value on the work done by direct reports who come into the office regularly, over those who maintain a work-from-home (WFH) arrangement. This is called proximity bias.

How Do You Avoid This?

To avoid allowing your bias to color your performance reviews of your direct reports, you should make an effort to understand the environment in which they’re doing their work, whether in the office or at home.

Make sure that you give your direct reports a way to provide their own feedback during the performance review process too, without any fear of retaliation. This can give you new insights into the reasons why there’s room for improvement in certain aspects of their work, and helps you provide useful feedback they can act on.

Getting information from other sources of data, such as requesting self-evaluations from your direct report, or 360-degree feedback from their colleagues, could offer more of these useful insights as well.

2. Conducting Performance Reviews Alone

As a first-time manager, you might assume that you have to handle the performance reviews of your direct reports by yourself.

But this is not the case; in fact, it’s the opposite. Your HR department plays a key role in ensuring that the performance review process is effective across the board in your organization.

Thus, they should have a stake in making sure your performance review cycle is successful as well.

How Do You Avoid This?

Talk to the HR department in your organization, and get them to give you help as you tackle your first performance review cycle.

This could come in the form of training and resources to provide you with guidance and support. They might even offer hands-on guidance, such as sitting in on your first few conversations with your direct reports during the performance review process.

Apart from supporting you, your HR department should also help ensure your direct reports have a clear understanding of the process as well. This can help minimize the doubts and stress they are likely to have about the whole process.

3. Focusing On Criticisms Over Constructive Feedback

It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of lecturing your direct reports about where they’ve fallen short, and forget that it’s supposed to be a two-way conversation where constructive feedback can be shared both ways.

This is especially important today, when WFH arrangements have become more common than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Your direct reports may be facing new complications with their WFH arrangements.

For example, they could be juggling work and caregiving responsibilities. Or the WFH arrangement may have introduced other factors which have left them feeling burned out or isolated.

Without giving your direct reports a chance to give you their own feedback, you might never learn about this.

How Do You Avoid This?

Exercise empathy when having the conversation with your direct reports, especially when it comes to addressing their concerns and expectations in turbulent times like these.

To do this, make sure your direct reports have the opportunity to drive the agenda, and ask as many questions as they need. It can be as simple as you asking “How can I help you?”, to give them the push they need to actively do so.

Consider how changed circumstances have impacted your direct reports, such as whether they’ve taken up new roles and responsibilities during this time. Has it introduced new difficulties into their role, and how has this affected their performance?

The performance review is an opportunity for both you and your direct reports to reset expectations around work hours, prioritisation of tasks, responsiveness during work hours, and the growth and learning rate of your direct reports.

By addressing their strengths and weaknesses objectively and empathetically, you can build up a rapport with your direct reports while still maintaining a fair and effective performance review process.

4. Failing To Back Up Your Appraisal With Solid Data And Objective Criteria

Above all, make sure any feedback you give your direct reports is backed up by solid data. This keeps your claims fully objective, and helps you align your direct reports’ feedback and goals with your organization’s objectives.

Although performance reviews are typically based on a predetermined set of goals, the post-pandemic period may have changed organizational priorities. This means that goals set at the beginning of the year may no longer be fully applicable.

Also, personal circumstances may have affected your direct reports’ ability to meet their performance expectations.

Still, it’s important that you retain a structured process where they’re assessed on objective criteria, to ensure a fair evaluation of their performance over the past year. You do need to take into account any changes to targets that might’ve happened between then and now, and acknowledge your direct reports’ efforts spent on projects and tasks that were adjusted because of this.

How Do You Avoid This?

Nevertheless, it’s important to rely on a set of strong and quantifiable indicators for your performance review process. This eliminates the possibility of bias, and helps to keep you focused on your direct reports’ objective progress towards pre-determined goals.

Work with your HR department to create clear indicators that are airtight against any manipulation by either yourself or your direct reports. Also, take the latter’s feedback into account, and adjust these indicators as necessary to account for the changes that have affected your team over the past year.

Using software tools such as Omni HR is a highly effective way of keeping track of your direct reports’ progress towards their objectives. This helps you make more informed decisions about the performance review process, and keep on top of your team’s performance and productivity levels.

To Conduct Fair And Effective Performance Reviews, Keep These Pitfalls In Mind

It’s nerve-wracking for a new manager like yourself to conduct your first round of performance reviews, we understand. But, it can be done.

And it’s important that they be done properly, for they benefit not just yourself and your organization, but also the career progression of your direct reports.

To do so, you just have to keep in mind what to avoid. Ensure that your personal biases don’t influence the process, don’t try to do it alone without support from your HR department, and resist the temptation to criticize without providing the opportunity for two-way constructive feedback.

Last but not least, ensure your performance reviews are based on a structured, yet flexible set of performance indicators to take changing conditions into account. Make use of software tools like Omni HR to keep track of these objectives, adjust them as necessary, and track your direct reports’ progress towards achieving them.

The 80/20 Pareto’s principle explains that 80% of the results come from 20% of the employees in talent management. However, an organization should build robust systems that can make every employee a high performer. In every company, there is a section of employees who perform below average expectations due to various reasons. That could be personal or professional. A manager is responsible for finding it out and helping the employee in order to create efficient teams.

According to a McKinsey report, 86% of employees attain job satisfaction if they have a good relationship with the management. It is said to be a good relationship only if the managers look after employees’ well-being too. Managers should not just focus on the performance of the employees and fire them if they do not perform well. Employees should be seen as people, not just as resources that carry out the tasks in a company. Managers should be ready to guide them if they feel lost.

Here are a few ways how managers can help low-performing employees.

1. Identify the Problem

There are multiple underlying reasons for an employee’s low performance. If you are a manager, you should first check if they have been assigned the right projects. For instance, an employee might be very good at social media content creation but is not very good at other forms of content creation. In that case, a manager should know his/her employees well enough to give tasks according to their strengths.

If there is an employee who undergoes some personal issues, you should be empathetic and give them some time or support they need to help them recover. It does not imply that the employee should be idle at the office but just that you should understand and give them the nominal workload instead of increasing it as they are underperforming. Employees always do better if they feel that their company cares about them.

2. OKRs for Clear Job Expectations

If you are a manager, you should clearly communicate to the employees what is expected of them. The employees, who do not know their objectives, are working in vain as they are not aware of the direction they are headed. This is where Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) play a vital role. Objectives provide a clear view of the results expected from the employees. Key Results are the milestones that will help the employees to reach their objectives.

OKRs help employees cross-check whether they progress towards the right destination or not. If they do not, they can change their paths anytime. This also helps you to monitor the progress of your team members and provide guidance as and when needed. OKR is a concept that can have numerous use cases but should be implemented only if there is a need for it.

3. Ongoing Feedback

A survey conducted by Betterworks reveals that 66% of companies show year-round productivity enhancements as a result of implementing a continuous feedback system. Low-performing employees can improve their skills and work efficiency only if they learn where they go wrong and what they should do differently to bring results. You should have regular feedback sessions with the employees to discuss their performance. Ask your low-performing employees how they feel about their performance and learn their thoughts without forcing your opinions on them.

After listening to their words, start with positive feedback and then move to the areas for improvement. During these continuous feedback sessions, make the employees with low performance feel comfortable and speak about the challenges they face at work and the obstacles that hinder their performance.

Managers should review the progress of the employees periodically and give feedback immediately instead of waiting for the once-in-a-year performance appraisal process.

4. Open Mind and Growth Attitude

If you are a manager, being open-minded with a growth attitude is absolutely necessary to make low-performing employees into high-performers. If you already have a preconceived notion about the low-performing employees when you enter the feedback or appraisal sessions, you will never give them a chance to improve by imparting your knowledge to them. A manager should be open-minded to take fair decisions and possess a growth attitude to think of solutions and utilize every employee’s fullest potential.

5. Effective Training Programs

When you have continuous feedback sessions with low-performing employees, you know what they need the most at the moment to improve their performance. Based on those session notes, you can suggest training programs to them to improve their skills and perform better. Instead of overloading them with work till they resign or not giving them tasks to fire them (which happens in companies with no strong work ethics and culture), it is better to organize training programs that can help them. This will build loyalty and trust among the workforce.

6. Mental Well-Being

Depression and anxiety have become serious health problems in recent days. Mental well-being is very important to maintain physical strength. In a study, more than 42% of employees suffer from depression and anxiety disorders. This could be one of the reasons why your employees are not performing well. As a manager, you should convey the thoughts of your employees to the higher management and suggest that they arrange sessions with mental health experts for every employee in the organization. This will bring a massive productivity increase in your company as the employees would feel heard and the employees who really needed help would have received it from you.

7. Work Together

Depression and anxiety have become serious health problems in recent days. Mental well-being is very important to maintain physical strength. In a study, more than 42% of employees suffer from depression and anxiety disorders. This could be one of the reasons why your employees are not performing well. As a manager, you should convey the thoughts of your employees to the higher management and suggest that they arrange sessions with mental health experts for every employee in the organization. This will bring a massive productivity increase in your company as the employees would feel heard and the employees who really needed help would have received it from you.

8. Dump Your Traditional Performance Review Process

Traditional performance review process will not help low-performing employees or any employee. You can never learn about your team members’ mindset, their difficulties, and the solutions they need as you will have a conversation with them only once a year. Even that conversation will never be deep as both of you will feel awkward discussing your thoughts and feelings after 12 months. In the end, nothing productive will come out of the entire performance review process. Therefore, dump your traditional performance review process and adopt the continuous performance review process.

9. Recognize and Reward Every Effort

If the low-performing employee has achieved a milestone that you had set for him, then make sure to recognize his effort and reward him. Some managers do not recognize the achievements of employees as they are terrified of the word ‘reward.’ Rewards need not be a hefty sum of money; it can be a recognition note, or a token of appreciation for recognizing their efforts. This gratification will motivate the low-performing employees to perform more efficiently. Every company should adopt strong rewards and recognition programs to appreciate every employee’s efforts.

10. Upskilling Opportunities

Treat low-performing employees just like how you treat high-performing employees. They should get equal opportunities like access to courses that can help to upskill. As a manager, you can suggest a course that would suit the employee’s skillset. Those skills might come in handy when your team needs them. Perhaps, this also could be a chance for them to explore their interests and direct their career in their field of interest. This might look like a lot of work but it is totally worth it as you retain your employees by building trust among everyone through your kind and determined core values.

To Wrap Up

A manager has the power to make low-performing employees into average or high-performing by implementing the right strategies. More than money, employees care about company culture, the field of work, the responsibilities they handle, etc. Identifying what is bothering your low-performing employee and resolving it makes you a strong leader. Hiring talents are difficult these days; therefore, adopt solutions that help you to overcome your challenges with talents and retain them.

Recognition is a top tier motivation among employees, and higher employee engagement can increase company profitability by as much as 22%. Amid the busy schedules and long to-do lists for HR teams, performance appraisals are a consistent opportunity for managers to recognize and engage their employees.

Performance appraisals are meant to provide an unbiased, objective view of an employee’s performance, and serve as a feedback loop to help improve performance. Even with the best of intentions, performance appraisal biases can creep up if reviewers are not aware of what these biases are and how to spot them.

Read on to learn more about common performance review biases and best practices to avoid them.

1. Recency Bias

Recency bias is the tendency to recall your most recent interaction with a person and focus on that over the other historical interactions you’ve had with them.

For example, you may have a good rapport with an employee where they meet their deadlines and contribute to team meetings, but they dropped the ball on their most recent project and missed their deadline. Recency bias would be to recall the most recent project performance without taking into account their history of generally meeting deadlines and contributing to the team, and using this to inform your performance appraisal.

To avoid this performance appraisal bias it’s essential to provide yourself with tools to take a holistic view of their performance. When preparing your appraisal, take a look back at their deliverables and projects for the year, and reflect on each interaction to regain a well rounded view.

You may also want to closely document your employees’ performance and development, and highlight their key wins. This can help mitigate future tendencies towards recency bias, and help you manage their performance fairly going forward.

2. Proximity Bias

In a world of increased remote and hybrid work environments, proximity bias is on the rise. The tendency to believe those you physically see and work with are working harder than employees that are off-site, proximity bias can greatly disadvantage and warp the perception of remote or hybrid employees’ contributions.

Despite having several years under our belts of remote and hybrid work, assessing employee performance with a lack of face-to-face interaction remains a challenge for many managers.

As such, you might unconsciously place more value on the work done by employees who have returned to the office, and conversely less value on work done by employees still on WFH arrangements; especially when you can’t see work being done with your own eyes.

To mitigate this, coaching and enabling yourself and your fellow managers on how to conduct performance reviews for employees in a remote or hybrid environment is highly recommended.

To reduce the likelihood of this performance appraisal bias, conduct more frequent reviews on a quarterly basis, instead of yearly or biannually. Make use of collaboration platforms like Slack or Zoom to have more interactions with your employees and maintain a regular 1-on-1 check in schedule to build rapport with your off-site employees.

3. Idiosyncratic Rater Bias

Idiosyncratic rater bias occurs when a reviewer places more weight on skills that they themselves are not skilled at, and lower weight on skills that they are good at. An example of this would be a manager who knows a lot about social media management but little about SEO. The employee may have room to grow in their SEO skills, but excel at their social media management skills. Idiosyncratic rater bias would cause their manager to rate their SEO skills as excellent, but their social media skills as average.

Idiosyncratic rater is a performance appraisal bias that skews performance data because it often tells us more about the reviewer than it does the employee being reviewed. To avoid this bias, work on creating a consistent rating scale and asking objective, measurable questions to assess an employee’s performance. As a reviewer, ask yourself to support your feedback with quantitative examples to help bring objectivity to your review. A great way to build this into your review system is to implement SMART goals for performance reviews which provide measurable and quantifiable results to assess an employee’s performance.

4. Gender Bias

Gender bias has been a prevalent issue in the workplace since the workplace came into existence. Where men and masculine-presenting individuals tend to be judged on their behaviors and accomplishments, women and feminine-presenting individuals are more likely to be judged by their managers based on their personalities and attitudes. Further, the same behaviors between men and women are perceived differently under gender bias. For example, a man speaking up about his opinion in a meeting is perceived as “leadership behavior” and “assertive” whereas a woman doing the same is considered “bossy” or “unagreeable”.

To minimize the effect of gender performance appraisal bias, make use of structured feedback and formalized criteria to assess your employees. This can prevent you from the creep of assessing them through gender-based personality attributes, and focus more on their behaviors and accomplishments. Whatsmore, educate your leadership teams on gender bias, and be sure to include the bias against transgender and non-binary employees. While the bias may look slightly different for these individuals, maintaining a vigilant education around the issue can help even the playing field.

Minimize the Effect of Biases During Performance Reviews

Biases affect employees and their managers year-round, but are most prevalent during performance review cycles.

To combat recency, proximity, idiosyncratic rater and gender bias as performance appraisal biases, take a more holistic view of your employees’ overall work history, check in regularly with your employees to see how they’re doing, utilize 360-degree feedback from their peers, and rely on structured feedback and formalized criteria to mitigate their effects. Like most biases, raising awareness and sharing educational materials help bring attention to our tendency for bias, thus reducing their frequency.

Improve Your Performance Review Cycles With Omni

Performance reviews are a busy time of year. Between scheduling, gathering data, screening for performance appraisal bias, and summarizing performance feedback, HR teams find themselves overwhelmed by paperwork and unsent reminders. With Omni, HR professionals and managers can digitize their performance review process to easily gather, analyze, and report data, send automatic reminders, and receive alerts when reviews have been completed.

Join the modern teams leveraging technology to improve their business processes. Schedule a demo with our team today.

48% of employees care more about their work when they receive feedback in the workplace, yet only 2% of companies worldwide believe their performance management process delivers high value. This could be because performance management — the strategy organizations use to manage, measure, and improve employee performance — has an administrative problem. Any manager or HR professional will tell you, performance reviews, setting and tracking SMART goals, and all of the other various components that make up performance management are time-consuming, and difficult to stay on top of.

This is why it’s so essential for modern businesses to perfect their performance management system if they hope to keep an engaged workforce. Let’s take a closer look at what you should know, look out for, and do to get the most out of your performance management system.

What is a Performance Management System?

A performance management system is a set of processes that organizations use to measure, manage, and improve the performance of their employees. The system is designed to align employee performance with the goals and objectives of their organization.

Performance management system software is essentially the automation and digitization of a performance management system and serves as the tool to help HR departments and managers streamline the tasks and deliverables required to manage their employees’ performance.

Performance management systems are necessary for companies to engage and nurture their workforce, but if managers and HR are too bogged down to effectively implement these systems, their efforts go to waste.

Performance management software is what ensures that the many intricacies of performance management – from goal setting and tracking to 360 reviews – get accomplished in a personalized and timely manner to promote employee success.

Key Features (and Benefits) of an Effective Performance Management Software

If you’ve spent any time searching for a system to help you manage performance you know just how overwhelming it can be to decide which performance management system is best for your organization.

You want a software that is easy to use and within your budget, but you also want to make sure the system will actually be effective for your management needs. Let’s break down the key features of an effective performance management software to help you find the right management solution.

360 Degree Reviews

Performance reviews are best executed when we have a well-rounded perspective on performance and accomplishments. 360 degree performance reviews – the process of collecting and providing feedback from different points of view on specific skills, values, and competencies  – are powerful tools for alignment, development, and course correction.

Your performance management system should not only have a feature that supports 360 reviews but also simplifies the process of gathering holistic feedback from various stakeholders. These features streamline the review process for a growth-oriented, bias-free performance appraisal.

Omni’s performance management feature allows you to track review cycles, distribute customized performance appraisals, and send automated reminders to guide the review process to completion. Ensure no employee goes without a review, and easily track and manage cycles on one easy-to-use dashboard.

Goal Setting and Tracking

Implementing goals consists of both setting and tracking goal progress. Both require their own amount of effort and thoughtfulness, but tracking goals – whether they’re SMART goals or key performance indicators for employees – is often the step that falls by the wayside. Whether that’s due to busy schedules or a lack of understanding of how to adequately measure and track performance review SMART goals, having a system in place to manage the process of goal setting is a must-have in your management toolkit.

An effective performance management system should provide a tailored approach to goal setting and tracking. Omni’s customizable goal tracking templates help managers guide employee performance reviews, track employee submissions, and derive critical insights to drive business decisions all in one centralized platform.

Automated Performance Reviews

Performance reviews are multi-faceted and thus time consuming for managers and HR teams. From assigning, tracking, reminding, summarizing, and sharing feedback with employees, it’s easy for the workload to pile up during review season.

An effective performance management system should allow you to automate the entire performance review process – from implementing customized performance review templates to analyzing and distributing results – without the headache of manually monitoring each review phase.

Omni’s performance management tool takes the administrative burden out of performance reviews so you can spend more time on the strategic planning necessary to drive business outcomes.

Feedback and Communication

Having a strong feedback and communication loop is good management 101. A performance management system should give you the capability to facilitate regular feedback and communication between managers and employees, including everything from ongoing coaching and development to easy visibility into employee attendance. This feature increases employee engagement and breeds a productive and motivated workforce.

Omni’s employee-friendly platform allows employees and managers to view team schedules, access an intuitive notification center, and leave notes, reminders, and feedback on various tasks to streamline communication.

Customization and Flexibility

Each organization and their employees have their own unique set of goals, tasks, and communication styles. As your teams and departments grow and change, your performance management system should grow and change with you. Seek a performance management system that allows you to customize features and one that is flexible enough to adapt to changing requirements and priorities as you grow.

With Omni, you can customize everything from employee records and performance review forms to visibility access and org charts with a few clicks.

Performance Metrics and Analytics

Having easy access to trends in your workforce enables you to identify patterns in performance, allowing you to course correct in real time and keep your business on track. A performance management system should have robust analytics and reporting capabilities, as well as an easy to use interface to collect and review this information to help you make targeted, data-driven decisions.

Omni collects real time employee data and metrics so you can easily create reports to drive business decisions. With customizable fields and fast turnaround time, you can efficiently run multiple reports to tap into the actionable insights that help drive business decisions.

Integration with Other Systems

One of the biggest pain points for HR teams is the lack of cohesion across systems. You might be tracking payroll in a spreadsheet while running your recruitment efforts through a separate ATS. The lack of consistency increases the likelihood of errors and valuable time is lost to data entry. A performance management system that integrates with other systems, such as payroll not only saves time, it ensures consistency and accuracy of data.

Omni is built to seamlessly integrate with your most used applications while replacing your disjointed manual workstreams. Get in touch with our team to learn more about how Omni can fit into your HR practice.

User-Friendly Interface

The goal of a performance management system is to make your job easier, not further complicate it. When considering a software, ensure the interface is easy to use and intuitive. This will cut down on implementation time and encourage employees to utilize the system. A good way to determine this is to ask for a demo, and use the system yourself; if you feel confused or lost on how to perform basic tasks, it’s likely not the solution for you.

Omni’s intuitive and flexible platform is built for every employee to use and benefit from it. Try it for free, or schedule a demo with our team to see for yourself!

Security and Privacy

HR is the gatekeeper of sensitive employee data. It’s essential that your performance management system have strong security features, including data encryption and access controls, to ensure that sensitive employee data is protected.

Omni’s control center allows managers to customize exactly what employees can see and change within their own profiles as well as their peers. With encrypted data and password protected features, we ensure all information stays in the right hands.

Enhance Your Performance Management with Omni

Performance management systems should make your job easier and increase productivity across your organization. When chosen thoughtfully, performance management software helps managers establish employee performance standards and supports the entire end-to-end employee lifecycle while reducing the burden of administrative work.

Omni is a user-friendly, secure interface that makes recording and accessing data, managing employee performance, and providing feedback easy and intuitive for all teams. Our modern and adaptable platform is built to seamlessly integrate into your day-to-day employee management tasks.

Book a demo with our team today to experience the ease of Omni for yourself.

In every leader’s career, there are times when you need to provide constructive criticism to your direct reports (or your peers). A person may be underperforming, have interpersonal issues with other team members, or feel disengaged from their work. This is when you need to step up and offer honest feedback to improve the situation. But it’s not always clear how to best give tough feedback in a way that resonates with the recipient. 

Learning how to give negative feedback can help ensure your feedback has a positive impact on an employee’s success, engagement, and overall trust in your leadership. Read on for tips on how to give negative feedback, create a feedback culture within your team, and turn constructive criticism into a positive experience for your team members.

Why Is It Important to Know How to Give Negative Feedback?

Answering the question of how to give negative feedback can be difficult and tricky. While it may be uncomfortable, offering constructive feedback shows that you are invested in your employee’s progress and achievement.

The point of giving negative feedback is not to highlight mistakes or failures. Constructive criticism is done to highlight opportunities for growth and improvement and should come from a place of resolution, not reprimand.

Feedback cultivates learning, whether it’s positive or negative. Ongoing development and growth opportunities are one of the most important factors for job satisfaction, so having a manager who is good at delivering negative feedback can make a big difference in the employee experience, not to mention their performance.

The 10 ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ of how to give negative feedback

Even with strong communication skills and a healthy level of trust, giving negative feedback is never easy. But with the right set of tools and a growth mindset, you can learn how to give negative feedback in a way that encourages employees and promotes growth, rather than dread.

Be prepared for your next feedback session with these 10 ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ of how to give negative feedback, and make your feedback process less stressful, leading to more productive conversations.

1. Do prepare your talking points

Like any meeting, feedback sessions are more productive when you plan. Avoid getting sidetracked or missing key points by preparing your talking points ahead of time. Consider cross-checking your feedback by asking these questions:

• Did you address the who, what, where, when, and why of the situation?
• Did you identify specific behaviors or give specific examples?
• What are the 2-3 most important things you want your negative feedback to convey? Does this feedback convey those points?
• Did you prepare the next steps for the employee?
• What are your intentions for sharing this feedback?

Understanding your intentions helps you measure the success of your feedback. The goal should always be positive, whether to improve one’s performance, address disengagement, or manage peer relationships.

2. Don’t be vague

We get it, nobody likes giving negative feedback, especially if you and your employee have a close rapport. You might find yourself wanting to sugarcoat your feedback or offer indirect statements to soften the interaction. While your feedback must be kind and constructive, being vague isn’t helpful and only further confuses and misguides employees. 

Offer direct, to-the-point feedback that allows your employee to easily understand what they need to work on and help them understand what needs to be changed and how they can improve. Clarity is compassionate and offers employees the tools they need to reach their full potential. 

A good rule of thumb for how to give negative feedback is the sandwich method: offer two positive comments on either end of your negative feedback. Here’s an example:

“Great job on your presentation today! I thought the information you offered was well-researched and informative. However, your slides were hard to follow. Next time, try using the company template to add more clarity. Again, the overall presentation was great, and you did a fantastic job speaking to your research, with revised slides I think the audience will be more engaged.”

3. Do pick a convenient time

Providing feedback, especially negative feedback, should be done at a time that allows the employee to truly hear what you have to say, and have space to ask questions. Be mindful of the setting and timing of your feedback conversations to maximize your impact.

For example, a good tip for how to give negative feedback is to praise in public and criticize in private. Avoid pointing out weaknesses or errors in front of your employees teammates and peers, as this can cause your employee to get defensive or lose trust in your relationship. 

When you want to offer feedback, schedule some time for a 1-on-1 meeting to ensure you have the time and space to properly discuss the feedback you’re giving.

4. Don’t shut down

Managing employees requires a personal investment from HR and managers, and takes considerable time and effort to maintain a relationship with your direct reports. If you’re having trouble with an employee and find yourself having to give negative feedback, it’s important to create the space for those conversations and not shut down. 

If you find yourself avoiding the conversation or ignoring an employee’s poor performance, you might be experiencing signs of burnout. Ask for support from your peers and recommit to the journey of guiding employees to their best performance.

5. Do stay professional

When considering how to give negative feedback it’s important to remember that even though your rapport with employees may feel friendly and casual at times, your ultimate goal is to manage them. This means it’s important to remain professional when delivering constructive feedback. This not only takes the personal element out of the interaction it helps convey the seriousness and growth opportunity to your employee, leading to more purposeful conversations. 

Furthermore, you should always document your feedback conversations with employees to provide a clear timeline and picture of their performance. Writing warning letters for employee poor performance is one of the first steps you should take when approaching the conversation of negative feedback with employees.

6. Don’t make it personal

It is easy for employees to become defensive when given negative feedback on their work if they feel personally attacked. This results in more resistance and is less likely to implement any necessary and meaningful changes that are asked of them. So, when managers are giving their feedback, it’s important to consider this and deliver feedback in a way that is not personal but professional. Employees receiving feedback should never feel as if they, as a person, are not capable of doing well or improving. Always encourage employees and offer solutions to help them improve.

Also, focus your feedback solely on the work and not the person, use data and numbers to back up what you are saying. Employees are less likely to take offense to negative feedback when it is supported by statistics. It shows that the feedback is not personal, and gives a tangible target to work on and improve.

7. Do ask questions

Offering constructive feedback should come from a place of curiosity and an eagerness to help your employee reach their potential. More often than not, when an employee is underperforming it is because they are struggling in some area and need your support. Be sure to leave room for questions and answers during your feedback conversations.

A good way to approach this is to adopt the coaching questions approach. Start by asking questions to guide them through the issue at hand and let them draw their own conclusions. Listen to their theories about what could be improved. You may be surprised by their findings.

Try the past-present-future method:

• How do you think [name the topic of discussion] is going right now?
• Have you ever had issues like this in the past? How did you deal with them?
• Do you have ideas on how we can improve the current situation or avoid it in the future?

8. Don’t make assumptions

The moment you make an assumption about an employee’s underperformance, you close the door for a true constructive conversation. One of the key components to how to give negative feedback is to keep an open mind and be prepared to hear what your employee has to say about the situation. A good rule of thumb is to assume the best and prepare for the worst. That way, you leave space for employees to work their way back to a good standing and can provide the support they need to improve their performance.

9. Do offer solutions

Ongoing feedback is a crucial part of improving employee performance and helping team members grow. So, don’t only share your current perspective, but also discuss how the feedback will apply in the future, and how employees can apply it in their day-to-day work.

Try the problem-implication-solution approach:

Regardless of where the conversation begins, it is important to establish the next steps. Help your employee identify a few action points to follow up on in your next discussion.

10. Don’t leave them hanging

Offering negative feedback without a path forward is not only discouraging but harmful to employee morale. Understand that feedback conversations are meant to help nurture employee performance and provide a path forward. Be sure to wrap up a feedback session with the next steps and an action plan for employees to follow. It’s also a good practice to schedule a follow-up conversation to revisit the issue down the line and assess how the action plan worked out.

Empower Employee Growth with Omni

Learning how to give negative feedback to your employees takes practice. Feedback is an essential part of managing an engaged and productive workforce and requires consistent, open, and organized communication.

Omni makes it easy to communicate with your employees with customizable templates and automated communications for instant feedback loops that promote increased employee engagement and high-performing teams. Get in touch with our team to schedule a demo, or try a free trial to see for yourself.