Before launching a Review it is important to consider different factors such as its alignment with the rest of the already launched initiatives or how it will be communicated to the rest of the team. Doing this previous work will be the foundation for creating a successful review.
First steps
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Define a clear goal for the campaign: It is important to define what we want to achieve with the campaign, but also be prepared for all the possible scenarios that may take place later. For example, in the case that the next step after the review is a salary review it will be necessary to set up the criteria that it will be followed.
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Evaluate the company: Evaluate and have a clear understanding of the context of your company but also of the different teams and managers maturity in order to decide for example, if it is better to create an anonymous review or which would be the best scale to apply to the review.
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Assess how the process fits in with other dynamics: It is important to take into account if this new review will be taking place at the same time that other reviews, for example.
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Explain the process to participants: Communicate in advance how the review process will be to all the participants in order to have it into account and be able to organize themselves properly before it starts.
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Special explanation to managers: Managers will play an important role in the process, so it is important that they can plan well the workload they will have in order to have their commitment to achieve the objective of the review.
Review configuration
There are a number of configuration factors that need to be considered even before to start the process of setting up your review. We have created a number of questions to answer that will help you out with this process:
1 How often will the review be launched?
Depending on the pursued goal the reviews can be launched yearly, semesterly or quarterly.
💡The tendency in the industry is to perform this review exercise more frequently, semesterly or quarterly.
2 Who should participate?
It is advised to exclude people that have just joined the company as they haven’t had enough exposure to the company to form an opinion.
3 What do we need to ask in order to achieve our goal?
Make sure that the questions are clear, that managers and People departments are aligned and choose the scale that adjusts better to your case from the ones available.
💡Create brief descriptions of each of the options and add them within the review to ensure that participants fully understand them.
See below some tips on which scale to use:
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Numeric Scale 1 to 4: This scale is advised to be used when you need to make a decision, as people need to have a clear opinion as there is no middle ground.
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Numeric scale 1 to 5: This scale is a happy medium between having too many options and granularity.
💡This is the one most companies use and the one we recommend at Nailted.
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Numeric scale 0 to 10: This scale is ideal when you need variability, however it has a negative side as it can generate gray areas.
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Likert: When using this scale it is super important to set short, clear and differentiated labels.
4 What questions should be asked?
The most common questions that companies ask the review participants are related to company values (95% of Nailted companies use them), team competencies, performance and goals. See below some examples:
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How do you self-assess with respect to the value "Analytic"?
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How do you self-assess with respect to the competence "Results Orientation"?
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What do you hope to achieve in the next 6 months?
💡The average number of questions that each person has to answer in an evaluation is 12 questions per person evaluated.
5 Who will be giving feedback about whom?
Feedback can be given in many different directions, so it is important to have a clear structure of who will be giving feedback and to whom. There are 4 different directions in which questions can be done:
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Self-review: These questions are written in the 1st person singular as they are intended to be “asked” to oneself.
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Peer to peer: These questions are written in the 3rd person singular as they are questions done to one coworker about another one.
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Manager to direct report: These questions are written in the 3rd person singular as they are questions done to a manager about their direct reports.
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Direct report to manager: These questions are written in the 3rd person singular as they are questions done to direct reports to evaluate their manager.
6 What degree of anonymity do we need?
Depending on your company structure you may need different degrees of anonymity:
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Fully anonymous: when a person receives the results they won’t know from whom they come from.
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No anonymous: when a person receives the results they will know from whom they come from.
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Access to managers: Managers will be able to see or not the feedback within their teams.
7 Which phases will the review have and how long will each phase take?
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Nomination: Administrators or managers set up who will be giving feedback about who and they will agree to some criteria in order to be aligned. In this phase the participants do not participate.
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Participation: Feedback starts to be given among all the participants as established in the nomination phase.
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Calibration: This phase is used to ensure that the results are objective and consistent among all the feedback that has been provided. It is very important that managers have been explained how they should do this process and are aligned among them to use the same criteria.
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Results delivery: Results shouldn’t be just given, but discussed. Therefore a best practice is to give results through a 1:1 meeting.
💡Nailted can provide specific training for managers about how to perform a 1:1 meetings and hold difficult conversations.
Communication to the company
Communication will be a key aspect to create a successful review process. Make sure to add all the information that you have created during the prior stages to be accessible to the participants by creating a document containing the goal of the campaign, explanation of how the process will work, etc. This way, everyone will be able to have a full understanding of what is expected of them and how to proceed.
💡This document can be linked to the review description in Nailted, making sure that everyone has access to it.
Resources
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