As a business owner, you want employees who are improving all the time. The better your people are, the better your business is going to be. Their expanding skillset will be the primary factor for the growth of your company. Their personal growth is connected to your business’ potential AND your personal freedom. If your people can own more responsibilities year over year, your focus can turn to the future of your company. Your business will depend less on your day-to-day work so that you can focus on providing leadership and coaching for your team.
The problem with most business owners is that your efforts to develop your people are often reactionary which ends up in hurt feelings and missed expectations. You feel like you are giving them feedback, but it is not translating to positive changes. It is most likely because your feedback consists of you talking and them listening. They say they know what to do next, but the results show otherwise. You continue to be frustrated and they continue to make mistakes at their job.
The right people in your organization are not going to wait for you to fix this issue. If you continue to neglect employee feedback and reviews, you will lose your best people. Or worse, you will keep the people who have no desire to improve their skillset. The culture of your business will only fit people who are satisfied with their current level of expertise. They will have little or no drive to grow. You will be attracting the wrong kind of employee for your business. You will not have a culture of growth. You will have a culture and an attitude of complacency and satisfaction with the way things are.
What if you had a consistent review process to develop your people year after year? What if the right people were attracted to your business because they knew they would be coached and developed? What if you began to unload more responsibilities to your people because they have the skill set to handle them? How would that affect your freedom to see the future of your business?
Here 3 reasons why you should perform employee reviews:
1. Your feedback is the most powerful
As the owner, you hold IMMENSE authority and influence over your people. They see you as an expert in the field. They want to know how you think so that they can align their thinking with yours.
2. Your people want to get better, they may not know HOW
(Most) People want to be challenged to improve themselves. People want to get better. It simply takes someone to challenge them before they realize it.
3. Your company will not grow until you do this
Your people’s growth will stimulate your company’s growth because your company IS YOUR PEOPLE. The better they are, the better your service and product.
Your next steps are simple: Grab a sample employee review from the Alliant website under “Free Resources”, tailor it to your business, and send it to each of your employees. Then, you complete one on them as well. Once you’ve both completed the review, set a time to sit down and talk through it with them for 30 minutes. You both will have a baseline from which to measure their growth and development. Do these regularly. Once a year is not going to help either of you. You need to review them each quarter to ensure that they are still on a growth track. No longer will you be frustrated by the lack of growth from your people. Your people’s abilities will grow and so will the potential for your company. Invest time into your people today. Your future self will thank you for all the time and effort you saved.
