How Often Should You Review Your Employees?

There is no doubt that employee reviews benefit both the employee and employer. Every employee relationship is different, and you need to consider this as you prepare for reviews.

How often?  

If you only review your employees annually, your employees may become unsure about their performance in the office. Yearly reviews can be either be too broad or too specific. For example, you might bring up an incident that the happened 6 months ago. The employee may feel like they were left in the dark and blindsided because this situation happened months ago, and they did not realize that management was upset.

Healthy Communication  

Employees often respond defensively rather than receptively when they are only reviewed every year. There needs to be healthy communication.  It is also a challenge for management to coach effectively if the incident occurred way in the past. You ultimately want your employees to respond with positivity and learn from these reviews.

Create a Plan

With frequency and reaction in mind, now it’s time to create a review plan. The frequency of your reviews depends on a few factors. First of all, you want to think about how often salary and bonuses will be discussed. You also need to look at how long it takes employees to show signs of growth and change. This may depend on each individual person, so you may consider having different review schedules for each employee depending on the size of your company.

Take some time to analyze the above options and you’ll be able to create a great game plan!