Employee Reviews

The most common problems faced by small to medium sized businesses are usually "people problems." Solving them involves asking questions such as:

• How do you build good employee relationships?
• How can you encourage good communication?
• What motivates employees?

Employees should feel that work is fun. A feeling of participation is important. Money has to be there, but it is not the sole motivator.

In order to ensure that employees see work as fun and their participation as essential, regular feedback, in the form of employee reviews, is critical. Employees thrive on feedback and, while they won't usually ask for it, they need it to perform their jobs correctly.

The underlying assumption in giving out employee reviews is correct: employees want to perform and be valuable. Employee reviews give them benchmarks, goals and updates on how their doing. Without these things they can feel as though they aren't appreciated, they can be frustrated by not understanding what they are doing correctly and employers may miss the chance to correct behavior that is making the employees job more difficult than it needs to be.

In order to be a valuable tool an employee review must meet certain standards and maintain consistency from year to year and amployee to employee. The review must incorporate what the employee is doing right, or he/she won't feel appreciated. Conversely, the proper employee review must also make mention of what the employee is doing wrong or the review won't be taken seriously.

Read below for more tips on conducting good employee reviews and maintaining a great realtionship with your work force.

Encouraging togetherness

Hide nothing from your employees. Speak to as many employees as possible every day. Tell them where the company is and where it is going. Also, keep groups small so that decisions can be made quickly.

It's important to define a common objective that will allow employees to work together. Develop your mission statement and share it with everyone - make everyone a part in accomplishing the company's goals!

Trust is essential in developing good employee relationships, and maintaining trust is an ongoing process. If you gather information about employee problems, you must respond to the information submitted and ask for possible solutions. These reviews must be scheduled, standardized, documented and conducted several times a year. Many managers claim to invent ad hoc review questions and have unrecorded data. This type of process is not only useless, but it is unfair to the employee and his accountability - and to his written job description, which should include objective performance measures. If reviews are not carried out properly, it's better not to perform them at all, as it may only serve in provoking disgruntled employees to bring law suits against their employer.