Anxiety and frustration. Those are among the words employees and their managers often use to describe performance reviews. Employees experience anxiety as they’re put under the microscope and attend meetings in which their shortcomings are the focus. Managers become frustrated they have to find time to fill out tedious forms and then engage in uncomfortable conversations.

As businesses try to turn the tide on what’s become known as the great resignation, there’s never been a better time to refocus and flip the performance review process.

The first step is to refocus on the why — that is, the desired outcome — of performance reviews. Traditionally, managers use performance reviews as an opportunity to let employees know what they do well and document those areas where improvement is needed. Some organizations provide performance-based pay increases, and reviews determine the amount. While these reasons make sense, the process can become rote over time and turn into a check-the-box exercise.

Consider turning performance reviews into opportunities to listen to employees. Address performance deficiencies as a daily task rather than as part of an annual process.  

Organizations that aspire to be a place where people want to work should make understanding employee experiences and expectations the focus of performance reviews. The outcome of performance reviews should be flipped. Let employees review their employers and share what’s on their minds.

Here are the key elements:

Change the name to check-in conversations or perhaps something that aligns with the organization’s products or culture.

Go to a quarterly process to enable frequent conversations when needed or desired by employees, with only one documented conversation required annually.  

Focus on multiple areas, but with no more than five talking points each.

Invite employees to take the initiative to schedule their conversations and choose the focus.

Numerous articles claim employees don’t leave companies, they leave bosses. Here, then, are some questions managers should ask:

What am I doing you’d like to see continue?

What am I doing you’d like me to stop doing?

What am I not doing, you’d like me to start doing?

Employees leave companies to attain different experiences and higher-level positions. Here are some questions to ask that can help uncover those aspirations:

When you think of your career goals, how does your current role at our company align with those goals?

What do you think you need to achieve the next goal?

What can I or the company provide to help you to achieve your goals?

Employees leave for other reasons, but managers don’t find out those reasons until afterwards. Here are some questions that could reveal what it might take to retain those employees:

Is there something other organizations offer you wish our company offered?

If you were to leave our company, what would another organization need to offer for you to consider leaving us?

What would cause you to stay with our company and not consider other offers?

These are all scary questions to ask, and the process of refocusing and flipping performance reviews should be taken only after careful consideration and preparation. In addition, managers should be coached on how to actively listen and, more importantly, respond with humility rather than defensiveness.  

Let 2022 be the year you refocus and flip performance reviews. Listen from a perspective of genuine curiosity and a desire to truly understand the employee experience. That’s the key to employee happiness and retention.