I don't know about you but writing annual performance reviews when you have more than a few people reporting to you is a daunting task.  Trying to remember what your employees did and how they performed (both good and bad) over the period of the year is quite difficult.  If you find yourself writing very general commentary with no proof, you may run into a situation (like I have) where an employee will say to you "Why do you say that?"  "What specific situations lead you to write that?"  Additionally, having a performance review where an employee is surprised by their rating or worse yet, DISAGREES with your rating is not a good way to manage.  Shame on YOU if your employees don't know what their rating is BEFORE you hold the performance review.  After a few years of struggling through these issues, I've developed a few ways to deal with this that will make writing annual performance reviews easier and these performance reviews will be airtight.

Hold Monthly Mini Performance Reviews

Yes.  Every month hold mini performance reviews.  I begin these meetings with a series of questions to the employee that goes like this "How did you think you performed last month?"  Followed by "Why do you say that?"  Followed by "What can I do to help you?"  Followed by "Why do you say that?"  I ask these questions to get a sense for the level at which they PERCEIVE they are performing.  I then follow their answers by rendering my opinion very mechanically.  I want to be CRYSTAL CLEAR so I say this the same way each and every time with each and every employee.  "Your performance last month....fill in the blank with "meets my expectations," "exceeds my expectations" or "falls below my expectations."  99% of the time, by asking the questions I've asked at the beginning, my opinion matches the opinion of the employee.  On rare occasions, the employee opinion of their performance does not match mine and this becomes my opportunity to be very clear with them where they stand with me.  Remember, this occurs monthly.  So when the annual review conversation is held, the employee should have a very good idea of what their rating will be because we have gone through this exercise.

The second part of the meeting focuses on the future.  I ask this question "what do you need to....fix or sustain....your performance?"  This give you a wealth of information from the employee.  Do they know what they should be doing?  Do they know how to do it?  Are they filling you with BS?  Do they have a plan?  Do they care?  Once again, you can then follow this by rendering your opinion of what they should do to fix or sustain their performance.  This interaction can turn into a training opportunity obviously. 

Document, Document, Document

So you hold your mini monthly performance reviews, that's great.  But how can you make the reviews easier to write and make them airtight?  Document, document, document.  This is one of the less glamorous parts of this process but a very, very important part.  With every meaningful interaction you have with the employee over the course of the year, including the monthly performance reviews, you need to document what happened and save this documentation.  How do you do this to make it easier on yourself?  First, create a folder in Outlook for each of your employees.  Second, every meaningful email you receive from or ABOUT your employee (from customers or co-workers for example) should then be filed into this folder.  Remember to file both the good emails and the bad emails. 

When you've observed your employee doing something (good or bad), write yourself a quick email documenting this observation while it's fresh in your mind.  Something as quick as "Ian on call with prospect.  Answered objection without isolating the objection first.  Got off call without establishing next steps for future interation."  That's it.  Took me 15 seconds to write.  Now you have a date and timestamped interaction filed in your employee's folder that you can pull out later and LITERALLY cut and paste into their annual performance reviews with the email headers and everything.  Cut and paste!  If you do this enough times over the year, you're actually writing the review as you go.

Of course, the monthly performance reviews are critical to an airtight performance review.  Again, when you're meeting with your employee and asking them questions and rendering your opinion (meets expectations, falls below expectations or exceeds expectations) you should be taking notes of this in front of the employee using your notepad or writing an email to yourself.  Then when the meeting is over, if you haven't already written an email to yourself, you write a quick email to yourself about the content of the monthly performance review meeting.  It can be as simple and cryptic as this:

Subject Line:  Monthly Performance Review:  Joe Schmoe April 2009
Date: Thu, 5 April 2009 18:08:38 -0800

Meets expectations (employee agrees)
Wants me to spend more time in the field with them
Wants to role play their opener (put 7am once per week on calendar to do this)
Feels they are not being effective at getting in front of the decision makers.  Not sure why.

That's it.  Don't go overboard on this unless you're dealing with a very serious issue.  If you do this at least 12 times per year, you'll see so many patterns and be able to document strengths and areas for improvement.  With that you can see progress or stagnation over the year and be able to write a very good performance review with very little effort at the point in which you have to write the performance review.

If you follow my process above, your employee will always know where they stand with you.  They will never be surprised by an annual review you give them.  The review will be filled with lots of proof of your assertions (HR loves this).  The review won't take you much time to write because you'll be cutting and pasting your documentation into the review.  Best of all, if you're trying to get your employee a promotion, a raise or making a recommendation for termination, you have multiple instances of documentation that help prove your case.

Kevin Gaither is a highly motivated, seasoned, hands-on sales executive with a 15+ year track record of consistently exceeding sales goals, building highly motivated, energized and productive sales teams, and excelling at developing new business. Kevin Gaither is a highly independent, assertive, creative and confident self-starter who thrives in a fast-paced and entrepreneurial company. Kevin Gaither has the proven ability to recruit, hire, train, retain and develop top-ranked sales teams by clearly articulating objectives using analytical thinking, reference to facts and best practices. Kevin Gaither has excellent leadership, prioritization, communication and analytical skills. Kevin Gaither has the ability to develop and clearly articulate objectives using both analytical thinking, reference to facts and best practices.