Why Not Conduct Your Performance Reviews now?

During this unprecedented time of lockdowns, quarantines and social distancing, it's time for Compliance Professionals to look at those jobs that you almost never get around to.

In this case it's conducting your performance reviews of your Compliance staff.

This blog comes from an ongoing series of blogs that orginated from "26 Ideas for Working from Home for Compliance Professionals".

Here are the good practise tips for conducting your performance reviews.

Most organisations have a process of conducting formal reviews of employee performance.

From my experience of auditing these organisations, they are always behind on actually doing them.  The most common reasons are:

• "I don’t have time to do them and when we do them it feels rushed, it’s always a last minute thing".
• "I don’t have the information available to do a review. Things like Assessments, Training Records, Interactions with the organisation management system and Qualification are not avaiable to me".
• "We both don’t feel engaged in the process, because it’s rushed and driven by the HR Department".

With the lockdown current situation, let’s see what we can do to fix it.

Well you can do them remotely, and use up some of your newly available time.

So what can you do to make the process easier, engaging and not time-consuming.

Here are a few review suggestions:

1. Before you start doing them, read the company policies and procedures around performance reviews. Many organisations that I encounter have a procedure in their system saying they will do them. But a lot of the time they are never done and nor do they understand the purpose of the process.
2. Review and update the policies and procedures to ensure meets the objective of the process. Reviews should be straight-forward and easy to do.
3. Ensure the information that supports the process is available, i.e. there is access to training records, qualification, assessments. This may require access by the the IT department. In some cases traning records could be held in the payroll system. These days that information in now found in QHSE online software solutions.
4. As you will be conducting the performance review remotely, then the Employee should suggest which platform they are most comfortable with. There is a myriad of options i.e. Zoom, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, conference call or Go-to-meeting.
5. If the employee is comfortable with the process, then it will make the review easier.
6. Conducting the performance review remoting gives the employee great flexibility in arranging a suitable time. This maybe a good way to do reviews for employees in other branches in the future. It will save travel costs and time.  It very common for organisations to job interviews by Skype, Go-to-Meeting or WhatsApp so performance reviews is no different.
7. Make sure the review conversation is two-way.  Both parties should have an equal opportunity to talk.
8. Agree on performance levels and discuss an action plan into the future.
9. Keep suitable records during the meeting. Some of these tools have a recording function, so an electronic record is great.    

So now you don't have a reason to not do your reviews.

Get to it!