Reviews a time to stay positive

Published 10:49 pm Thursday, November 22, 2007

Giving employees annual performance reviews or appraisals can be one of a small-business owner’s most dreaded tasks. Doing them more often and going into the process with a positive rather than punitive attitude can make a review much less of an ordeal.

Perhaps the first thing to know about employee reviews or appraisals is that they shouldn’t be once-a-year events. You should be giving your staff feedback — positive and negative — on an ongoing basis. Some companies have sit-down sessions with workers two, three or even four times a year, finding it’s worthwhile whether an employee is doing well or struggling.

By giving more frequent reviews, “you focus on identifying problems before they get too big and mapping out ways to correct the behavior,” said Julie Lenzer Kirk, of Damascus, Md., who owned a software and consulting company for 10 years.

You also defuse some of the tension that’s incredibly painful not just for the staffer, but for you.

Jeri Uhlmansiek, whose marketing firm gives staffers reviews three times a year, said that placing a lot of demands on a staffer at an annual review and expecting them to all be met quickly “doesn’t seem fair.”

Or realistic. “What we wanted was incremental progress, and they wanted that too,” said Uhlmansiek, president of Zillner Marketing Communications, based in Lenexa, Kan.

Furthermore, it’s better to make reviews and discussions of them as positive as possible. Rather than unloading criticism on an employee, reviews should be aimed at helping a staffer to improve and to help the company’s productivity and growth. They should help build a staffer’s confidence and sense of purpose.

“I can be a mentor and a coach or I can walk around with a hammer,” said Peter Boritz, president of RDM, a New York-based real estate technology and management services firm.

Uhlmansiek sees reviews as a way to retain good employees: “It helps connect them with the company’s progress and show them where their career path is within the company.”

A formal review involves a written appraisal as well as a discussion with the employee. But again, feedback shouldn’t be limited to a specific time of the year; workers should be hearing from you in the course of their work about what’s going well and what isn’t.

“It should be something that’s ongoing and open communication,” Kirk said.

Uhlmansiek finds that employees want that feedback. Good workers want to know where they stand and what they can do to be even better. “There’s no substitute for recognizing a job well done,” she said.

For some employees, the review may be part of a disciplinary process. All the more reason to conduct it in a positive way, letting the staffer know he or she has the opportunity to rectify a situation; then, if after several attempts there’s no progress, you have a record to back up a dismissal.

Kirk recalled an adviser telling her, “No one should ever be surprised when you fire them.”

An honest owner who has his or her company’s best interests at heart will be open to getting some reviews from employees as well.

It’s also best for employees to know in advance that a review is coming. The worst thing you can do is just drop it off on a desk or send an unannounced e-mail. Advance notice helps employees think about what they want to ask for in a review session, or what they might want to complain about.

“We ask them to come prepared with thoughts and ideas,” Boritz said. “It makes things go quicker, and there’s not a lot of tension when you close the door.”

If you’ve never given an employee a performance review before, it’s a good idea to get some grounding in how to do it. You can talk to a human resources consultant, or if you can’t afford one, contact SCORE, the organization of retired executives who counsel small business owners on a variety of subjects, including human resource issues. You can find a SCORE counselor at www.score.org or by calling 800-634-0245.

Other small-business owners with experience in giving reviews can be a good sounding board as well. If you’re in a business network that holds discussions or seminars on specific topics, you might want to suggest one session be devoted to reviews.

You can look at some of the many books on the market that describe how to write a written review and how to discuss an employee’s performance with him or her. And a search of the Internet will reveal a variety of software programs that promise to speed up the process of writing reviews; many have demos so you can see if that’s something that will work for you.

Joyce Rosenberg writes about small business for the Associated Press.