Attention Managers: Follow the No Surprise Rule
If you want to improve your career life, OlyLife wants you to remember the “No Surprise Rule” when it comes to giving an employee a job performance review. As a manager, if you are giving someone on your team a poor job rating at their annual review and they are surprised, that’s a bad thing and it’s nobody’s fault but your own. That’s plain and simple. When it comes to career job performance reviews, OlyLife believes you should at a minimum adhere to the following rule.
Annual Performance Review Rule
- Never, Never, Give An Annual Job Performance Review Where An Employee Is Surprised or Caught Off Guard.
Excellent Managers Give Feedback Along The Way
If you have folks on your team who are doing a good job, you should be letting them know on a quarterly basis – as a minimum. For managers who have employees who are falling short of goal, they should be told as near to the time of the less-than-desired job performance as possible. Regular feedback should be given to let the employee know that they are not hitting the desired performance mark and how they can do better.
Documentation is Your Friend
In addition, the manager should meet with the worker regularly to let them know if performance is not meeting or exceeding performance guidelines. There should never, ever be a time when the employee has no documentation showing that they were told about less than acceptable performance until the annual review. The most debilitating and demoralizing way to handle career performance is to counsel or coach employees about unacceptable performance for the first time in an annual career performance review.
Evaluate Your Own Performance
So, that’s it, practice no surprises performance reviews. If you have a job performance issue right now with someone that you haven’t dealt with, postpone the review and coach the person about their job performance matter first. Give them time to make it right before you do an annual career performance review. After coaching and with appropriate feedback and time, the performance will likely move up to a satisfactory level, but if not, there will not be a surprise when it comes time to do the postponed job performance review.
Here is another excellent resources on career improvement. Read on and improve your career and your one and only life!
Buy at Amazon: Performance Appraisals and Phrases For Dummies
[...] them to be successful. There should never be a negative surprise when it comes to the annual performance review.Remove the road blocks that are preventing or delaying your employees from getting their job done in [...]