Shift Employee Reviews: An Unappreciated Opportunity to Get Closer to Staff
Bad managers and business owners believe performance reviews aren’t worth the effort for frontline workers. Shift employee reviews reflect on your business and management skills as strongly as your employees’ performance.
Remember the old adage: “Good employees don’t leave businesses, they leave bad managers.” So, skipping performance reviews or not taking them seriously sends a negative message to all your employees.
Instead, it’s time for you to use reviews to your advantage, learn how below.
How to make the most out of your performance evaluations
Stop thinking of reviews as a chore and instead as an opportunity to get closer to your staff members (which can be hard to do with multiple locations and ever-changing shifts).
Use reviews as a way to acknowledge hard work
If you aren’t part of the day-to-day operations, shift employee reviews are the perfect time to acknowledge hard work. This can be done through verbal praise, promotion, or a pay raise. For many frontline employees, acknowledgement and wages are the two most important things to them.
Our research shows that for every $1 wage increase, retail hourly workers were 1.6x more likely to report positive feelings after a shift. There are similar results for hospitality workers — every $1 increase leads to 13% of workers leaving with positive feelings after a shift.
Remind employees of workplace standards and expectations
Let’s be honest with each other for a moment: Life is chaotic, and it’s easy to forget things. This includes certain rules and practices a business expects employees to follow — particularly if these practices aren’t commonly used.
Instead of punishing employees for not following practices, especially if managers haven’t addressed these issues as they come up, use reviews to remind them of these standards. You can do this by pointing out how not following these rules affected their performance. As long as your tone is light, it shouldn’t feel like an admonishment to the employee.
Give feedback, not just criticism
Performance reviews should never focus on punishment. When an employee has performance gaps, focus on constructive criticism — not just point out their failings. Offer potential solutions to help them fill in those gaps.
No one wants to hear how they are doing a terrible job. It’s essential you go into reviews assuming everyone is doing their best (unless there’s a pattern of poor performance). There could be many reasons why an employee has poor performance. Maybe it’s something in their personal life or even a management problem.
If you go in with a punishment mindset, you are doing your employees and business a great disservice.
Ask them if they are struggling with any aspect of their role
As mentioned before, if you aren’t part of daily operations, shift employee reviews are an opportunity to spend one-on-one time with your employees. Check in with them. Ask them if there are any problems with management. Are they not getting what they need to do their job? Do they want more mentorship?
Doing the above shows you care about your employees as people, which will help retain talent. People want to feel valued.
Open career advancement opportunities for high performers
If someone has consistently shown high performance, it’s time to open the door to possible career advancement opportunities. Whether they take them or not is up to them, but you offering these paths shows you acknowledge their hard work and believe in their skills.
In fact, it’s been reported that simply gaining access to developmental opportunities can be the difference between being “more satisfied” and “least satisfied”. Employees with such access are 42x more likely to report being “more satisfied”.
Review your business operations
Sometimes, performance reviews can show a pattern of issues in how your business is running. Maybe there’s a scheduling issue, as shown through attendance issues. Maybe staff don’t have enough initial training, and there are knowledge gaps between newer and experienced employees.
As we’ve said, reviews reflect you as much as employees. Don’t be afraid to take a hard look at any operational gaps that appear.
How to create a successful performance review process for shift workers
We understand that giving time and effort to give employees reviews is easier said than done in a shift environment — but you shouldn’t cut corners. Here’s how you can give high-quality reviews in a chaotic environment.
Spread out reviews over time
Do not try to do all your performance reviews in one day or even a week. That just puts pressure on everyone. Instead, look at how many reviews you have to do and calculate a reasonable amount of time to complete them. Even if it takes a month, it’s better than speeding through them in a week — remember, how you perform reviews will show your employees how you feel about them.
Set a set time to do reviews
Establish when you want to do reviews. Are they annually? Every six months? Would you rather do them at the beginning of the year or the end? Setting a set time for reviews will make it easier for you and your managers to prepare for them — reducing the stress of the process.
Train managers to give the reviews in your stead
If you are too busy to give reviews, train your managers to do them. Teach them everything we discussed above — feedback, not criticism, acknowledgment, looking towards how to improve things — so they can give reviews that your employees will actually enjoy.
Encourage a continuous feedback culture
Instead of saving all your feedback for reviews, create an ongoing feedback system. By addressing positives and negatives in real time, you will not only connect with your employees, but also make reviews shorter to give. You won’t have a lot of feedback to give that your employees aren’t already aware of.
Use templated review forms
Make your life easier by creating and using a templated review form. Doing this will streamline the process, which will also make it quicker. You won’t have to worry about whether you asked all the right questions or if the person who's giving the review is biased.
Also, establish what form you use before the reviews commence, so you can focus on using the best template instead of the first one you see.
Employee performance evaluation examples
Unsure of what templates to use? Don’t worry, we've got you covered:
Don’t forget to check out our shift operations hub for more helpful tips!
Proper performance reviews help everyone
Creating and implementing high-quality performance reviews is the key to growing any shift-based business. It boosts morale and reduces turnover, which allows staff to learn and grow into great talent.
If you need help managing your employees — Deputy is the tool for you. We offer an all-in-one platform that covers HR tasks such as performance management, communications, scheduling, and so much more.
Give Deputy a try today!
