Modern performance reviews: how to focus them on development

In a performance review, you traditionally, as a manager, discuss the performance of an employee in the past year or half year. You look back together at someone's performance and evaluate it. To make it a constructive and educational conversation, it is important to ask the right questions.

Ideally, you also give a rating or score to your team member's performance.

However, it is not the idea that it is a one-sided conversation in which only the manager gives feedback. For this reason, in recent years there has sometimes been criticism of the traditional performance review or appraisal in the HR world: it was too often seen as a 'judgmental conversation' in which mainly negative feedback was given.

But fortunately, you don't have to abolish performance reviews altogether: the alternative is to modernize the conversation.

The modernization of your performance review goes beyond adding a self-assessment. The goal is to have an open conversation focused on development, thus contributing to the growth of an individual team member and the entire team.

You achieve this by incorporating the following components:

1. Feedback
A modern performance review is not just about (one-sided) evaluating performance, but also about giving and receiving feedback from both sides.

That's why employees also give feedback to their manager and the team through the 360-degree feedback method. In addition, according to this method, you collect feedback from colleagues, partners, and others within the organization, so you gather a broader perspective and make the conversation more substantive and valuable.

2. Broad discussion topics
Furthermore, you don't just discuss someone's performance, in the form of measurable results and achieving goals, but also topics such as job satisfaction, professional growth, and career opportunities.

3. Focused on development
In a performance review, you don't just evaluate someone's performance and each other, but you also discuss development.

At Learned, we actually always see a performance review as a combination of an evaluation and a development discussion.

You discuss:

• goals for the upcoming period
• competencies or professional skills someone can further develop, such as communication skills or knowledge of a software system
• other opportunities for growth and development, but also obstacles

4. Continuous dialogue
Ideally, you don't schedule performance reviews just once a year, but make them part of an ongoing conversation cycle. In other words: a continuous dialogue in which you exchange feedback multiple times a year.

• twice a year a (formal) performance or evaluation review
• every month an (informal) 1-on-1 conversation where manager and employee check in with each other
• in each conversation, you discuss skills, competencies, and KPIs, but you also leave room for the broader discussion topics from point 2

Tip 💬 In Learned's development conversations, employees get a concrete and clear overview of which results, competencies, and skills they can develop.

The difference between a development conversation, evaluation, performance review and progress review can sometimes be subtle, as terminology varies across organisations.

Generally, you can distinguish them as follows:

In a performance review, you evaluate a colleague's performance and progress. Usually, a manager provides feedback on the concrete results or targets that someone has achieved, and shares areas for improvement.

In a typical performance review, you also set new goals for the upcoming period.

The difference from a performance appraisal or evaluation meeting is that a performance review is more one-way traffic: traditionally, 360-degree feedback and continuous dialogue are not included.

The purpose of a development discussion is to create a plan to improve the skills and abilities of team members, and to support their career development.

As the name clearly suggests, it is a conversation focused on professional development. Managers and employees discuss:

• strengths
• development needs
• career goals and growth opportunities
• education or training needs

During a performance review, you assess someone's overall performance over a certain period, such as a year or six months.

We use the terms performance review and evaluation interview interchangeably; as synonyms for the same thing. Manager and employee look back at achievements, and discuss future goals, KPIs or targets, skills someone wants to improve, and what behavior a team member can specifically improve for that.

The goal is to give each other 360-degree feedback, and based on that evaluation, discuss any rewards or development plans based on the assessment.

Looking for examples of a modern performance review? Check out these 10 questions for an open, development-oriented evaluation interview

In a progress review, you discuss the progress of projects, tasks or objectives with a colleague.

It can take place regularly to check if the employee is on track, address any problems and make adjustments as needed.

Want to get started with modernizing your HR conversation cycle, it might be smart to start with a new setup for performance reviews.

Here's how:

One of the most important changes is the addition of 360-degree feedback. This includes not only the opinion of the supervisor, but also that of colleagues and other stakeholders.

This creates a complete picture of your employees' performance. This allows the manager to make a more substantiated and balanced evaluation. In addition, the input from other colleagues provides new insights for both the employee and the manager.

Verder kun je het gesprek uitbreiden met diverse gespreksonderwerpen. Het verschil met het traditionele functioneringsgesprek, is dat je in een modern gesprek niet alleen iemands prestaties of functioneren beoordeelt, maar samen ook andere onderwerpen bespreekt.

Wij hanteren bij Learned 5 thema's als leidraad voor een modern, transparant functioneringsgesprek:

• job satisfaction
• performance
• development
• learning goals
• feedback about the organization

👉 Curious about the best questions to ask per theme? Download our template with 20+ sample questions for a performance review

The topics of 'development' and 'learning objectives' above already make it clear: in a modern performance review, you don't just evaluate past results, but you also look ahead.

A second development is the addition of questions focused on the future. This makes the conversation more action-oriented and more motivating for employees to work on their development: after all, you still have control over your behavior and your performance in the future.

If you want to measure the development and progress of employees over time, it is important to consistently bring up the same topics in performance reviews.

If you also want to focus on evaluating as objectively as possible, you measure someone's development based on:

• competencies (or soft skills)
• hard skills (or technical skills)

These are the same competencies and skills listed in the skills-based job profile, because by evaluating against them, you create a clear picture of what is expected in a certain job (level) – for both employees and their managers.

Bonus tip 💡 Performance reviews 2.0 are often not the only conversation between managers and employees, but part of multiple – including informal – conversations in a continuous HR conversation cycle.

You can choose to measure a performance review purely qualitatively.

But if your goal is to make evaluations objectively measurable, you can assign a score to each point you evaluate.

There are 3 steps to make evaluations objectively measurable:

In a modern performance review, you also discuss someone's development – in the form of their mastery of the skills and competencies required for a role (see point 4 above).

You measure the mastery of skills or competencies using different levels.

And you can easily express your feedback on someone's skill or competency level in a score, for example qualitatively (insufficient, moderate, sufficient, good, very good) or with a number (from 0-5).

This way, at the end of the conversation, you can give an overall rating – which clearly shows how an employee performs compared to the goals and requirements in their job profile.

Tip 💡 To make your evaluation of skills and competencies as objective as possible, it helps to work with a system in which the levels are described in terms of concrete behavior.

By tracking scores across multiple conversations, you get a clear picture of employee development over time.

This way, performance reviews offer not only qualitative feedback but also quantitative insights.

Once you attach a measurable score to the points discussed in performance reviews, you gather a lot of data that can be very useful in HR.

The most important action to take based on the data from evaluations is to use measurements of someone's performance and development as a basis for fair compensation.

In addition, you can use data from performance reviews for:

• comparing the performance of different team members, e.g. in a 9-grid
• determining development plans
• decisions about promotions and internal mobility
• identifying future leaders: succession planning

Want to know more? Read more about the benefits of objective evaluation

Want to get started right away with modernizing the performance review? Download our template with 20+ sample questions for conducting a motivating conversation, focused on development.

💪 Start conducting valuable and future-oriented performance reviews too! Download our template for a modern performance review here