The job of being a manager is demanding hard work, consuming time and energy. It’s quite common to hear managers talk about frustrations with people responsibilities, project pressures, ungrateful employees and not enough hours in a day. Many wonder why they wanted to manage in the first place and some wish they hadn’t. However, most managers and supervisors strive to do a good job, they’re just so often behind the eight ball and performance reviews can always be put off and completed tomorrow or the next day. An important first step is to develop an appreciation and understanding for the benefits of the Performance Review Process. Reviews can be invaluable to assess individual productivity, capabilities, attitude and results. Remember —if you can’t measure the results needed to meet department and company objectives, how will you manage to achieve them? Providing constant feedback is essential to developing the true potential of your each individual of your staff. The challenge is to provide immediate feedback to improve performance NOW! Commenting when you first noticed a problem is most effective to influencing future results. Then if the issue is resolved—great! If not, your responsibility is to identify the problem and involve the employee in discovering the best way to correct the situation. This is the primary responsibility of managing others. If you don’t want it—get out of the way of someone who does. It’s too important to be screwed-up!

One of the greatest compliments any employee could give their manager is “I knew exactly where I stood and exactly what was expected of me to do a great job!” If your staff is not saying this—they most likely are not being managed effectively and their results will reflect it.

Productivity is at its highest when employees trust their manager or supervisor. Remember trust is earned not given. Employees trust management who act respectfully, communicate openly about issues and problems, act responsibly, treat everyone fairly, pursue realistic goals and don’t place employees in situations where they are likely to fail. One of the best ways to create trust is to promise your staff “I’ll never put anything in writing that I haven’t told you first—even something positive.”

A manager must know the capabilities of each employee and how to effectively challenge them to develop and achieve more. A great manager Involves, Recognizes and Appreciates everyone that contributes and improves personally and professionally. This is known as the IRA management approach. A process of contributing to your employees’ motivational investment account. If you want to see immediate improvement — deposit heavily in their IRA accounts.

Performance reviews serve as the ultimate testimonial to increasing employee satisfaction and job performance. Nobody appreciates department dead-weights. If you are actively managing everyone—unproductive staff members will become very uncomfortable and will change their behavior or leave; in any case the employees will get the message and you get their respect. The primary benefit of the performance review process is to keep the right employees satisfied and those not interested "out of the way and on their way". Timely performance feedback indicates how you really feel about those you manage and how much you value their contribution.

If your staff is aware that they are number one in your eyes, then your customers will be number one in their eyes!

Everyone deserves ongoing performance feedback. Make it your priority.