HR Hacks To Review Employee Performance For Large Teams
Managing a large team is challenging for HR professionals for evident reasons. Every step of the journey seems daunting, from onboarding to training, scheduling, engagement, and issue resolution. Performance assessments are often the trickiest when hundreds of people are on board. You can imagine the stress of following up on each employee, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, and gauging their performance according to predefined standards. The sheer number of people in the team makes your hands full. But you can follow these proven HR hacks to review employee performance for a large team effectively.
Prepare beforehand
Planning ahead gives you a head start with an employee performance review, regardless of the team size. Good preparation includes having employee details at hand. Documentation from previous reviews empowers you with valuable information, but remember not to be biased by them. Besides getting the data, you must prepare the team members for the process. Reflect on it as a process to encourage professional development instead of finding flaws.
Use tactful communication
Performance review conversations with hundreds of employees can be stressful for managers, But you can rely on tactful communication to ease the process. Before sitting down with an employee, prepare for an empathic discussion that avoids criticism. Keep the sessions short and simple, and focus on finding solutions instead of discussing problems. Of course, you must let people know about the negative feedback, but use tact to balance the talk. Wrapping up the process will be a lot easier with this approach.
Use 360-degree feedback
Performance assessment in large teams gets tricky because not everyone knows the others. But you can try 360 reviews to get genuine assessments for employees by people who work with them. The best part of the system is that each worker gets anonymous feedback from their managers, co-workers, and others they come across at work. HR managers can gain valuable insights into the performance, competency, and behavior of employees from first-hand sources. These are reliable and actionable, so team size hardly matters.
Establish an ongoing process
Establishing an ongoing process for performance reviews is another valuable hack for HR managers leading large teams. Schedule periodic feedback from managers instead of following up annually. While the system may sound time-consuming for large teams, its benefits are worthwhile. It enables you to make micro-adjustments to improve performance instead of struggling with big changes once a year. Moreover, you can spot negative trends and address the causes sooner than later.
Share performance requirements in the employee handbook
Sharing performance requirements and review processes in the employee handbook is an excellent idea when your organization runs with a huge team. It brings employees on the same page regarding performance expectations. Also, transparency in review processes boosts the trust and loyalty of employees. They try their best to match the expectations in the first place. Further, clarity reduces the fear of performance reviews in the long run.
Reviewing employee performance for large teams need not be a daunting and cumbersome process. You only need to set up a smart process to get genuine and actionable feedback for everyone on the team.