Performance Reviews Are Here To Stay: 5 Reasons Why They Matter Even More in 2024

Performance reviews are an essential aspect of any organizational structure. They provide a formal opportunity for employees to receive feedback on their job performance, set goals for improvement, and discuss their career development with their managers. Informally, they are a chance for reflection. Managers, employees, and even the C-Suite can use this as a time to set goals, think about the future, and even build scaffolding they can use at a future date.
Performance reviews serve as the backbone of the organization in many senses. They represent important stages in an employee’s career and an organization’s fiscal year. They also provide managers with a way to document employee performance and make decisions about promotions, raises, and other personnel actions.

So why do we take performance reviews (and performance management) so seriously?

If you want to hear more about it straight from our team, you can schedule a demo of Trakstar. We’ll show you why performance reviews are essential, how you can use them to benefit your organization, and even give you some real-time advice on how to start setting expectations and aligning organizational values.

Why Are Performance Reviews Here To Stay?

Performance reviews are important because they provide a formal opportunity for employees to receive feedback on their job performance, set goals for improvement, and discuss their career development with their managers. They also provide managers with a way to document employee performance and make decisions about promotions, raises, and other personnel actions. Additionally, they can be used to identify training needs, measure progress, and ensure that the organization’s goals and objectives are being met. Overall, performance reviews help to ensure that employees are performing at their best and that the organization is achieving its goals.

Performance Reviews Reveal Strengths & Weaknesses

First and foremost, performance reviews help ensure that employees perform at their best. It’s important to know how your employees perform for many reasons. You can understand where there may be gaps in skills, set more innovative departmental goals, and identify which employees are ready for more responsibilities. With a performance management system like Trakstar Perform, you can select the scale on which to grade your employee performance.

Reviews also provide a platform for employees to receive constructive feedback on their work and identify areas for improvement. This feedback can be used to set goals and develop action plans to improve performance, which in turn, leads to increased productivity and job satisfaction. 

Additionally, performance reviews help employees understand how their performance aligns with the goals and objectives, leading organizations to increased motivation and engagement.

Performance Reviews Provide Documentation

Documentation reigns supreme in today’s world. Why?

Most people leaders have been in this situation: you have an employee that is performing below expectations, and you either want to put them on a performance improvement plan or part ways. They start arguing with you and saying that they are performing well. 

You need to have documentation to build your case. Performance reviews can be the documentation you need. This can be in the form of notes, 360-degree reviews, or acknowledgment of a poor review.

Additionally, performance reviews can be used to identify underperforming employees and provide them with the necessary support and resources to improve their performance.

But you don’t only have to use performance review documentation for negative reasons! This documentation can be used to make essential decisions about promotions, raises, and other personnel actions. Managers can use performance reviews to identify high-performing employees and reward them accordingly, leading to increased employee engagement and retention. 

For managers, documentation of the employees they lead can also be an effective way to show your skills. You’re doing a great job upskilling and developing the talent you’re nurturing. This might mean you can take on a more significant role in the company, or you could lead more employees.

Performance Reviews Help Identify Training Needs

Performance reviews are the perfect way to identify training opportunities, mentorship needs, and even who can be upskilled or reskilled into a different role. They can help managers to identify areas where employees lack the necessary skills to truly thrive within a role or the knowledge to perform their job effectively. This information can be used to develop training programs that target specific areas of need, which can lead to improved performance and increased productivity. 

Additionally, performance reviews can be used to measure progress and ensure that training programs positively impact employee performance.

When you go straight from performance reviews into your learning management system, it’s easy to see the direct impact your training has. Within Trakstar, you can automatically enroll employees into specific training courses in Trakstar Learn that they can then take on their own time to improve. Use this for simple professional training or as part of the performance improvement plan you create to keep them within your organization.

Performance Reviews Keep Organizational Alignment

Lastly, performance reviews help ensure that the organization’s goals and objectives are met. They provide managers with a way to evaluate whether employees are working towards the organization’s goals and objectives and identify areas where improvements are needed. This information can be used to make critical strategic decisions that align with the organization’s goals and objectives, which can lead to increased success and profitability.

It doesn’t even have to be organizational. Use performance reviews to align departmental goals or break goals down on smaller teams. Who is responsible for what? How can you all work together to get where you need to be?

Ready to Uplevel Your Performance Reviews?

In conclusion, performance reviews are an essential aspect of any organizational structure. Performance reviews are an important tool for organizations to improve employee performance, increase productivity, and achieve success.

It’s important to note that performance reviews should not be one-time events but rather a continuous process. Also, it’s important to remember that the performance review process should be fair, objective, and transparent. This means that the process should be consistent across the organization and that all employees should be held to the same standards.

You can do this by building a performance review process with performance appraisal software like Trakstar Perform. Perform helps to create performance standards and apply them across your workforce. To learn more, schedule a brief demo with our team.