Performance reviews are a critical part of managing a team successfully. After all, you need to measure and assess the quality of work of employees at some time so that you can work toward improvement. At the same time, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your team members puts you in a good place. But performance reviews are tricky, and you cannot take a set-and-forget approach. You probably need to make some adjustments in the process over the years to get accurate stats and ensure employee satisfaction. Here are a few reasons to consider overhauling your performance review process.

Everyone in your team dreads review time

Employees may feel uncomfortable about being assessed, which is a normal reaction. But if you notice that everyone in the team is anxious and stressed as the review time approaches, you must surely rethink the process. Stress can cause negativity in the work environment of an organization. Even worse, it may hit the productivity and efficiency of workers. It usually happens when people aren’t sure where they stand because managers fail to provide feed­back regularly.

Employee turnover rate is high

A high employee turnover rate is a reason to worry for any organization. The reasons people do not want to stick around vary from a hostile environment to inadequate compensation and slow growth. People also consider leaving if managers do not give adequate and timely performance feedback. Shuffling your review process may be an ideal solution as workers learn their shortcomings and get an opportunity to address them. Also, positive feedback gives them a reason to stay.

Managers are reluctant to give honest feedback

Another reason you may need to rework the process is when managers are reluctant to provide honest feedback to employees. Sharing the weaknesses is often the harder part. But it can actually give favorable results if managers deliver it appropriately. Your managers can use these performance review phrases to say the right things during the process. They need to worry about missing out on negative stuff only to avoid confrontation because the approach translates into lost opportunities for development.

Feedback is not current and relevant

Your teams may lose the chance to gain insight into their cur­rent per­for­mance if the feedback does not come often enough. Remember that feedback has to be current and relevant to drive performance improvement. The process requires an overhaul if reviews happen only once or twice a year. Instead, managers should offer con­tin­u­ous feed­back instead of waiting until the next for­mal review. It enables workers to improve in real time and give their best.

Best workers are losing out

Every company has a few rock-star employees who are always better than the rest when it comes to productivity, efficiency, and performance. You may want to shower praise on them and drown the laggards in a sea of criticism. However, managers tend to leave the best people aside because they are already doing well. Depriving these workers of constructive criticism is a bad idea because the scope for improvement is always there, even with the best workers. You must overhaul your review process to address the concern.

Reviewing employee performance is a way to move them toward better results. But you must ensure that your process is good enough. Watch out for these signs to understand whether it requires an overhaul.