6 More Tips for Boosting Manager Engagement During the Employee Review Process

Manager buy-in and engagement are critical for the success of the employee review process, particularly when it comes to larger organizations with many employees, leaders, and stakeholders. When your HR department needs to spend time with each employee and talk to them about performance, training, and succession, getting that management team buy-in is imperative.

But manager buy-in is difficult to get.

Engaged managers can provide valuable feedback and support to employees, helping them to improve their performance and reach their goals. On the other hand, unengaged managers can make decisions, say comments, and hand out reviews that hurt team members, employee engagement, and employee retention.
This article will explore the best tips for boosting manager engagement during the employee review process. If you need help to have meaningful conversations with your senior leaders, middle management, or even individual employees, we can help you. Schedule a demo of Trakstar Perform today.

Provide Training and Support For Hard Conversations

Provide managers with training and support to conduct effective employee reviews. Ensure they have access to resources such as training modules, coaching, and examples of effective reviews.

Use your learning management system to provide courses and information about best practices when sharing concerns about performance issues with direct reports, management teams, and even the entire organization.

However, your training needs to go beyond your performance review system. Can your managers talk about the goals of the entire organization? Can they quantify the work their direct reports are doing to key stakeholders in your organization? Are they able to identify performance issues? What insight can they provide into priorities for the next sprint or quarter? 

Your training program must go above and beyond best practices and expertise to include human elements, decision-making, and conversation skills.

Communicate Expectations to Your Managers

Communicate clear expectations for the employee review process to managers. Provide them with guidelines for conducting reviews and a timeline for completing them.

Managers really need to take ownership of the performance review process, and you have to ensure they have their own priorities in order. Maybe this means they need to look at departmental or team analytics to see who the top performers are. 

Bring your management team together regularly to talk about things that matter to the leadership in your organization. Listen to employee feedback on how they think the process is going, then refine it. 

Communication is an important piece of this puzzle. You need to communicate effectively to the management team in a few different ways. We suggest:

• Somewhere they can see it
• Somewhere they can hear it
• Somewhere they can read it
• Somewhere they can refer to it

This might seem like you are building more work for leadership and HR, but you aren’t. 

Use a User-Friendly Performance Management System

Use a user-friendly system for conducting employee reviews. This will make it easier for managers to complete reviews and provide feedback. Consider using a platform that allows easy navigation and offers templates and examples of effective reviews.

At Trakstar, we suggest using our manager-approved, modern performance management system, Trakstar Perform. This solution promotes not only better reviews but employee engagement, employee feedback, and management buy in, and helps keep each person on your team aligned and accountable. 

Trakstar Perform automates performance reviews, keeping them aligned with organizational strategy. It provides a singular point of truth for your HR project management, team member job descriptions, current management structures, and performance reviews. We have 360-degree reviews, KPIs, analytics, and more that help you get managers aligned.

Click here to schedule a demo.

Encourage Two-Way Feedback

Encourage managers to provide two-way feedback during employee reviews. This means not only providing feedback to employees but also listening to their feedback and incorporating it into the review process.

Your strategy for employee retention, conducting good, effective performance reviews, and building a better company culture depends on your current management and how well they communicate with leaders, key stakeholders, and employees. Encourage open, frank discussions about the decisions that are made, the opportunity for growth and change, and how each person has a say.

Within Trakstar Perform, we have employee engagement features that help you poll and survey your workforce, getting insights and analytics into how they really feel about everything from the performance review system to their training programs, leaders, organizational direction, current management, and more.

Schedule Regular Check-Ins

Schedule regular check-ins with managers during the review process. This will help keep managers on track and engaged in the process. Provide them with the opportunity to ask questions and receive feedback on their performance as a manager.

Old-fashioned performance reviews didn’t work or align with your talent management strategy because you didn’t use check-ins with your employees. Not only does this help with engagement and retention, but it helps your employees understand that you really see them. Someone isn’t just a project manager to you, for example. They are a person with outside responsibilities and concerns. 

Recognize and Reward Managers

Recognize and reward managers for their engagement during the review process. Consider offering bonuses, gift cards, or recognition programs to incentivize managers to provide thorough and effective reviews.

Your managers make daily decisions, whether to promote an employee for a specific opportunity, enroll their team in a training program, set a new goal for their team, bring together ideas, or something else that sets them apart, impact your team. The better your managers are, the better your existing management team becomes, the better the entire organization is. The more company goals you can reach.

One practical way to further motivate managers and show appreciation is through personalized rewards, such as offering promo codes for meal subscriptions. This approach not only incentivizes thorough and effective reviews but also provides a valuable, lifestyle-enhancing benefit that acknowledges the unique efforts of each manager.

Ready For A Performance Management System Your Managers Will Love?

Boosting manager engagement during the employee review process is essential for its success. By providing training and support, communicating expectations, using a user-friendly system, encouraging two-way feedback, scheduling regular check-ins, and recognizing and rewarding managers, you can create a review process that’s more engaging, efficient, and effective. So, implement these tips and watch your employee review process improve.

If you’re ready to get started with a better performance management system that ensures manager engagement, be sure to schedule a demo of Trakstar Perform today.