Make the performance review a joint venture

The performance review is a manager’s opinion of the employees performance over a given time period.  These are very subjective and one-sided and sometimes do not present the entire picture.  As they say, there are two sides to every story.  One way to get your employee involved in the process is to ask the employee to fill out a self evaluation or send you their interpretation of the years accomplishments and any areas of improvement they believe should be discussed.  This gives the employee some time to review the period being evaluated and offer their insight on the given tasks and projects. Ask them to review their work over the past year, and provide to you in written format what they believe went well in their assignments and what they believe they could improve on.

Getting the employee to send this information to you prior to the formal performance appraisal meeting is key to gaining powerful insight into their perspective of the year’s events.  Most managers are not involved in the day to day operations and tasks and are only involved when the project or tasks gets in trouble and needs management’s attention.  If you are not involved in the day to day, then do you really know the reasons behind why the project or tasks got into trouble?