Table of Contents

• Introduction
• The Traditional Performance review process
• Peer review
• Do’s and Don’ts during Peer review
• Conclusion

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of our lives. It has reinvented the way we used to work. No office commute, no physical stand-up meetings, no team lunch, and no personal chit-chats. But do you know there is one thing that hasn’t changed? Yes, it is the Performance review process. With remote working culture, the level of daily interactions with managers has come down considerably. There is far less visibility on the team members. Do you think it is right to have the same boss-employee performance management system?

The Traditional Performance review process

What’s wrong with leveraging Traditional Performance Evaluation process in this remote working culture? According to Forbes, only 20% of employees feel that their managers hold effective discussions about Performance. Imagine the situation in this remote working age where the performance visibility is far less when compared to work from office scenario.

Performance Evaluation of an employee is actually meant to review the employee’s performance over a period of time, to recognize his/her individual strengths that produced an impact at work, to be specific where he/she has performed exceptionally, to ask about the challenges faced and how the manager can be of help.

But in reality, the end-of-year performance review is all about the negotiation of the pay scale, compensation, and promotion instead of a true performance development discussion. If you are one among those remaining 80% then this might resonate with you.

In today’s changing world, the Performance review process is the one thing that remains out-of-date. It has been studied, researched, and debated for years yet continues to be broken. But fortunately, most of the world’s renowned organizations have started adopting a 360-degree feedback system wherein every employee gets a chance to share his/her thoughts about their co-workers. This includes peers and other involved stakeholders, not just managers’ feedback in performance evaluation. Why? Because Managers have less direct visibility into the day-in-day-out activities of every member of their team.

Peer Review

Peer review is a process by which employee’s colleagues get to evaluate the reviewee’s performance, skills, and competencies relevant to their work. This type of review can help the manager greatly as it sheds light on the employee’s strengths or challenges that might not have been exposed otherwise.

Typically, Peer feedback can be effective only when an employee knows the other colleague’s work well enough. Not just formal relationships. So, it is good to restrain feedback to the closest peers preferably of the same Team. In some cases, cross-functional teams come together and collaborate to achieve one goal. In that case, peer reviews can be confined within the project.

According to the Gartner survey, Peer review can boost employee performance by around 14% and can create a greater impact at work.

This kind of Peer-to-Peer feedback is less boss-centric and debars manager bias during performance appraisals.

Peer review engages others and encourages the network of peers to listen to each other’s ideas and solve problems together. This approach fosters continuous performance improvement, which focuses primarily on improving and developing fellow co-workers. This can make performance reviews forward-looking.

DO’s & DON’Ts in Peer review

Every project or team has different kinds of people that share different skills and roles.

Individuals may be reluctant to provide honest feedback initially. In that case, the management can offer adequate resources and training on providing high-quality feedback. This can assist the employees in giving accurate ratings and crafting constructive comments.

However, we have listed down certain Do’s and Don’ts while providing Peer review. This can greatly help the reviewer and receiver an idea of how the Peer review should be. When rightly done, it can improve employee performance to a greater extent.

Do’s:

1. Keep the review process fair, open and honest. If the company culture is not mature enough to take free and transparent feedback from its peers, then it can also be made anonymous.
2. Emphasize first on what the receiver is already doing well in the present (Positive feedback) and then suggest areas of improvement with the goal of developing his/her skills rather than simply evaluating performance (developmental feedback).
3. Highlight the qualities or job traits that you look up to in your peers to which the manager may not be visible.
4. Remain as objective as possible and outline the behaviors in terms of impact and effectiveness of their contributions that align with organizational values or goals.
5. Be clear and specific in the comment you provide. You can also prepare notes on which particular project or behavior you want to mention.
6. Provide positive and constructive criticism rather than pin-pointing their past mistakes.
7. Suggest courses or learning pathways that can help your peer in achieving their career goals. 
   
   Don’ts:
8. Never focus on personal traits that are not related to work.
9. Do not necessitate personal conflicts while offering a review.
10. Never share comments offered to a reviewee to another colleague.
11. Avoid being judgemental.
12. Evaluation should be solely based on the reviewer’s own opinion of his or her peers gained through their interaction and should not be influenced by others.

The receivers of the feedback will likely have concerns about the next step they should take once they get their results. So, it is important to have a plan for feedback delivery so they will trust in the process and take it in a positive sense. Employees can also be trained and guided through the process of feedback interpretation and can collaborate on creating development plans in a safe and supportive environment.

Conclusion

A well-trained and motivated workforce is an asset to the company and the key to achieving an organization’s success. So, it’s time we rethink Performance evaluations for 2021 and beyond.

Peer review is not just about gathering more information for the performance review. But to foster a culture of feedback and recognition that supports collaboration.

Synergita, employee performance management and engagement software come with an in-built cloud-based 360-degree feedback tool and other amazing features for tracking employee objectives and goals. Feel free to comment your thoughts.