Performance reviews should contain both positive reinforcement and some opportunities for improvement. These reviews are an excellent time to look to the future for continued “good” performance indicators and better performance where skills may be lacking.

Here is my 3-step plan to an effective negative performance review.

1. Make sure that your review of the employee and the negative portion of the review is fact based.
   1. Example – your company has “core hours” from 9AM – 3PM. All employees must be online (work-from-home) or in their office between those hours.
      1. You are getting ready to do Mary’s review and have “heard” she doesn’t always make the core hours. This is from the rumor mill – coworkers may not like Mary so they are trying to make her look bad. Before you put this in a formal document – make your own observations.
      2. If Mary is indeed missing these core hours – this is an opportunity to discuss how to get her back in line with what is expected of her.
2. Have real performance indicators to compare against.
   1. These are called KPIs – Key Performance Indicators
      1. Example – Bob’s main KPI is that he has 95% of the previous daily production ready for shipment pick up but UPS at 3:00 PM. Lately he has been missing this target and only about 75-80% is getting out the door.
      2. Discussion with Bob reveals that the production line has been missing their target and many of the shipments are not ready to be shipped and he is taking extra time to seal boxes etc. Your plan with Bob is to do some observations over the next month to see if there are both opportunities for Bob to improve and/or other departments many need to adjust what they are producing and sending for shipment.
3. Create a plan with the employee for success.
   1. Just telling an employee that are performing poorly without working out a plan is ineffective. Employees need to know what they can do to improve their work effort in your eyes.
      1. Example: Sue had an excellent review with the exception of her presentation skills. After discussing the negative review – HR found out that Sue had never really been trained in PowerPoint or giving presentations when they promoted her a few years ago and she admits it is a struggle for her. HR decided to free up some training money to send Sue to some classes at her local community college and if she could spare the time – they want to pay for her to join Toastmasters.

Delivering a negative performance review is never easy, but if you look for the opportunities to turn a negative into a positive and create a plan – it is a win-win for both the employer and employee.