The annual performance review is just around the corner, and all of your employees look like they’re on track to get a good review. OK, maybe there are a few stragglers, but most employees are doing well. Now it’s time to shake up your ant farm – you shouldn’t be doing annual reviews anymore. Your employees aren’t getting the kind of attention they deserve, some of them are considering leaving you, and some are even planning on taking advantage of your generous training programs before beating feet to your competitor.
You Need To Build A Relationship Based on Mutual Trust
Mutual trust isn’t established out of this air. It happens over time. How do you expect that trust to develop when you’re only meeting with the employee once a year? It’s just not going to happen. Annual reviews are a great time to review yearly goals, but what about getting to know your employees on a personal level? What about getting to know their families? Their friends? Their own personal goals and values? All of this is important if you really want to build a long-term relationship with your staff. Why?
Because one of the best ways to encourage and motivate employees is through incentives that matter to them. You can’t do that if you don’t even know who they are as individuals.
Offer Monetary Recognition
Monetary compensation can take the form of actual cash or gift cards are prizes. Handing out cash to employees is pretty straightforward. But what about gift cards, memberships, and subscriptions? All of this stuff needs to be based on what the employee finds personally valuable.
Sometimes, a gift of money just doesn’t cut it. The employee would rather have something that reflects their own personal values. Sometimes, it’s not so much about the dollar amount as it is about the fact that you understand them as a person.
Offer Non-Monetary Recognition
There are a variety of ways to recognize employees without giving them cash. For example, you could give an employee something as simple as verbal recognition. Doing this once a year isn’t going to mean much, but doing it every time they hit benchmarks will do wonders for morale.
Your Employees Grow Rapidly In Skill-Sets, Especially New Hires
Your employees don’t need just yearly training, especially new hires. Even when a learning curve is shallow, your new hires will probably need ongoing support for a variety of tasks that they will be expected to do in the future.
For example, let’s say that you just hired on a bunch of new IT professionals. They have the education to do the job, but they don’t understand the internal protocols. These protocols are government-mandated, and they’re updated periodically throughout the year. A training program, like those offered through K Alliance, will give your employees the ongoing feedback and assessments they need to do their job correctly. If you’re only doing one review a year, your employees will be hopelessly behind.
You Don’t Want Employees Botching Important Projects
Sometimes, projects need ongoing supervision. Let’s say you have a project that you expect to take six months to complete. If you’re only giving annual performance reviews, that project could be dead in the water for six months. You might be upset with the team working on the project, but why should you be? The answer is more frequent reviews.
Anthony Buckley values employees. He likes blogging about effective methods of improving employee satisfaction and productivity.
