How to Identify the Gaps in Performance Reviews and Solving Them Performance reviews is not just about evaluating your employee's work, but they also give managers a huge insight into the current and future path of the organization

Performance Reviews are a herculean task, the HR Manager and the employees both would agree. "You need to perform better' is definitely not the feedback an employee is looking for, especially in a work environment where there are constant changes these days. Performance reviews till today have more or less focused on the big picture whereas an employee prefers a detailed feedback. Let's look at few gaps that a performance review process usually has and the possible ways to resolve them.

Generic – The feedback mostly given by the organizations is quite generic considering that the organizations follow a standard process; which means it's the exact same parameters for all the employees. If you want your employees to grow, give them individual constructive feedbacks. Associate your feedbacks to a project – its results and objectives. This will help you to share a specific graph when it comes to the employee's goals, strengths, work ethics, direction hence creating precise parameters resulting in helping both the employees and the organization.

Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) - We live in era where there are constant changes in terms of trends, policy updates and objectives. Here an organization should adopt the ROWE method, where the focus should be more on the quality of the goals achieved as opposed to the number of goals. This will help the employees in focusing on the end result of the project undertaken rather than rushing to meet deadlines or investing too much effort on actions that may not benefit the end result. This shall help with the overall productivity of the organization as well.

Comparatives – Employees work on multiple projects through the year, but at times only selected ones are taken into consideration while doing a review. What needs to be understood is that a comparative should to be done of all the projects and then a cumulative review should be given. Try and consider the goal behind every project, see the actions and the focus behind them cause at times what is important are the initiatives taken as this gives an insight on the way the employee is working.

Engagement – A mandatory requirement of any organization – employee engagement, make it a part of your performance review as well. Share feedback in a more personal way, let them know how their performance is in respect to the different projects and their individual goals, positives and negatives, both. This will show the employee that not only the organization cares about them but also lets them know that their work is adding value to the organization and how. And additionally, it is also an apt way to connect the employee to the organization.

Frequency – Finally, it's the frequency of reviews that count. In some organizations, they are conducted once or twice a year, this is what we call is a "Traditional Review' method; these reviews are not in par anymore with the needs of today's workforce. The appropriate way to do is as suggested earlier is on a project basis every quarter, give your employees real-time feedback that will give them a direction on the on-going projects as compared to giving them a review of the project that they had worked on a year ago. The quarterly reviews will help the employees stay on course on all the levels leading to a better output on a regular basis. Regular reviews will also help in cutting down the recency effect in these cases wherein the performance is judged on the basis of how the individual had performed in the recent past.

Performance reviews is not just about evaluating your employee's work, but they also give managers a huge insight into the current and future path of the organization. Overall, a performance review process should be conducted in a way that it is beneficiary to all – the employee, team, manager and the organization.