7
min read
Wondering how managers can promote effective team management? Dive into this ultimate guide to team management with the top tips and best practices
7
min read
Team management is increasingly becoming a sought after organizational priority. At a basic level, it is about bringing and keeping people together to achieve set objectives and goals. While the focus on team management has been around for decades, its importance is lately increasing as organizations begin to realize the need for holistic collaboration and the perils of working in silos. Through the course of this blog, we will shed light on the meaning and importance of team management. At the same time, we will share some tried and tested tips to augment team management and how it is being redefined in the age of remote work.
Table of contents
As the term suggests, team management is essentially about managing a team to achieve a set target. While some professionals believe that team management is simply about delegation and allocation of tasks, it is important to understand that it is a much more comprehensive concept. Team management is practically the key to the success of any team.
It starts from bringing together the right talent, to nurturing them and leveraging their strengths, to retaining them and facilitating their personal and professional growth. Undoubtedly, the ultimate objective of team management is to ensure that a team is able to achieve what it sets out for. However, there are several factors like communication, delegation, problem solving, collaboration, etc. that make this achievement possible and collectively define team management.
If you find yourself wondering if team management is actually worth the while, take a pause and reflect on the question. On a macro level, the goal of effective team management is to achieve the set targets and goals. This is a direct reason why organizations must pay due heed to team management. However, if you are questioning how team management is able to achieve this success, we have a few reasons to support our assertion.
With a combination of enabling factors like effective communication, clear directions, seamless collaboration, etc., team management has the potential to create a positive and empowering work culture. Consequently, a positive work culture results in happier employees and acts as a great tool for employer branding. According to a study, more than 50% of executives say corporate culture influences productivity, creativity, profitability, firm value, and growth rates. Therefore, team management is a great asset for organizations to build the right culture.
On a similar note, effective team management has the potential to facilitate greater productivity and performance. The rationale is simple, team management entails clear expectation setting and accountability. There is no scope of confusion or chaos which leads to efficient work and meeting of targets. At the same time, team management enables employees and managers to share their expectations and concerns, augmenting satisfaction as a whole. Research shows that satisfied employees are 12% more productive than the average worker. Evidently, team management augments clarity of work resulting in increased productivity.
Finally, one of the major challenges faced by organizations is retaining top talent. According to a study by Gallup, 50% of employees quit their bosses and not their jobs. At the same time, the cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee’s salary. This is alarming and clearly indicates the cost of poor team management. Fortunately, effective management can help bridge this gap. When employees find a culture they can thrive in and a team that supports their goals and ambitions, they are unlikely to look out, reducing turnover significantly.
With a clear rationale of how team management helps and how an organization can benefit from the same, we can now move on to explore some of the top team management skills that managers and leaders must possess.
Team management essentially involves clear and more importantly a two-way communication. Managers should not only focus on ensuring that they are able to set clear expectations and communicate their thoughts well. They should also strive to promote active listening to gauge employee pulse, thoughts and ideas.
Delegation refers to allocation of tasks and responsibilities within the team based on the strengths and competencies of each member. Delegation, and therefore, team management is effective when leaders are able to gauge the capabilities as well as interests of all team members to ensure effective and efficient allocation of responsibilities. The result is not only effective performance, but also professional development for all team members.
For a team to work effectively, managers need to have a high emotional quotient and must display empathy for all team members. Employees need to be seen as humans and focus should be on their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. Empathy and emotional quotient enables leaders to manage their own emotions as well as those of others to be able to motivate and influence their team members.
Team management is all about making the right decisions which come together to result in great productivity. Decision regarding prioritization, resource allocation, and others that involve and impact the team. At the same time, decision making is often based on consensus, which when it goes well, results in effective team management.
The role of a manager is not simply to allocate tasks or perform those that come in their corner. Rather, problem solving is an important part of a manager’s key responsibility area. Managers who are good at problem solving have the potential to identify a challenge, critically analyze the same to come with the best solution. In most cases, when done effectively, managers can solve problems to bring teams closer together.
Each member in a team has several expectations when they come to work. At teams, the expectations of two or more members can be in conflict with one another. Effective team management is all about managing the expectations such that it creates a win-win situation for all. This often requires having difficult conversations with one or more team members and leaders who possess this team management skill are on the path to success.
Since team management is about bringing and keeping a team together, skills of ensuring fairness and respect are very important. No team member should feel that anyone else in the team is getting more attention or importance. Here, transparency plays a major role. When everyone knows what’s going on in the team, a culture of fairness and respect builds naturally.
Finally, the skill of being organized is integral to effective team management. Only when the professional leading the journey is organized and has control over what has to be done, will the team function effectively. Lack of organization and discipline will lead to chaos in the team. Therefore, organization is a great tool to manage and lead a team efficiently.
It is clear that effective team management practices need to be a key area of attention for organizations today. Team management practices are not only about getting the work done efficiently. Rather its importance lies in ensuring that in addition to the work being done, there is progress for both the individual and the organization at large. There are some team management tips that leaders can adopt to successfully mentor and navigate their organization towards success.
One of the first team management tips is consistency. Managers must be consistent across different avenues. On the one hand, their performance across tasks should be consistent. On the other hand, the way they react to the behaviors and actions of others must be uniform. For instance, one should not reward a behavior by a certain employee and disregard and punish the same by another.
The next one in the list of team management tips is understanding one’s team. This involves making an effort to communicate and collaborate with team members. This involves being clear in what you say and expect out of them, setting the goals and showing empathy. According to a study by Interact, 69% of managers are uncomfortable communicating with employees. This trend must change to augment manager effectiveness.
In addition to understanding the team, it is equally important to build authentic relationships. As another one of the key effective team management practices, managers must facilitate building trust and confidence in their teams. The road to building such relationships starts with being transparent in whatever one does. Additionally, managers must be fair in their decisions and create credibility for their teams to respect them and augment effectiveness in the way they lead. A report by IBM illustrates that 83% of employees experienced a more positive work environment when they felt there was trust in their managers. Building trust and authentic relationships breed manager effectiveness.
Finally, managers who really wish to lead effectively, lead by example. Expecting others to perform to the best of their abilities while the management doesn’t walk the talk is ineffective. Managers must lead by the way to efficient performance. Creating the right expectations for team members to follow becomes a key motivator in effective team management.
While these are important steps and actions that managers must take to promote team management, organizations also play an equally important role to equip managers with the necessary resources and assistance. To begin with, organizations should clearly define what effective team management means to them. This involves clarity in metrics and indicators across business verticals that define success. Additionally, organizations can experiment with investing in soft skills training and coaching programs for managers to help them develop the key competencies to lead their teams effectively. Ignoring effective management practices comes at the cost of poor organizational performance and team high team attrition rates. Providing managers with the right resources and support can help them build strong teams, a positive work culture and ultimately a healthy organization.
It goes without saying that organizations have spent years perfecting their team management practices. However, the advent of the pandemic disrupted every aspect of our lives, including the way we work. Invariably, organizations are being pushed to don a new avatar to keep pace with the changing conditions and adapt to the new normal. Here are a few ways organizations and managers can write the new playbook for team management practices.
Team management practices for a virtual workforce start with clear demarcation as well as communication of roles and responsibilities. Managers need to explicitly state deliverables and what they expect out of the employees. At the same time, KPIs or Key Performance Indicators, which can be captured and measured for a remote workforce must be agreed on and communicated. To ensure that everybody is on the same page is essential, because your employees will not be able to run to you every second like in the office.
Working remotely requires employees to have a robust setup at home to ensure effective working. Managing a remote team, thus, requires managers to ensure that all employees have the right resources when working from home. This majorly covers all the hardware (computer/ laptop), software and broadband needs. Obviously, the resources to function effectively will change from company to company. Therefore, managers need to come up with an exhaustive list of resources and ensure that employees have access to them. It would also be a good idea to alter the terms of contract for employment, wherever suitable. For instance, the travel allowance can be changed to a broadband allowance.
Owing to major online platforms and tools, managing a remote team is increasingly becoming easier. Some of the major challenges of working virtually, including, communication, collaboration, productivity trackers, time management, brainstorming, etc., all have their solutions in these tools.
The efficacy of managing a remote team largely depends on the people you have onboard. Thus, it is very important to ensure role suitability. This means that hiring of human resources should be on the basis of what skills and competencies the role requires. The needs and expectations for each role must be mapped to the skill set of potential candidates before hiring. Today, organizations can leverage several HR tech tools to make this journey smoother. When the person is suitable for the role, working remotely becomes easy and effective.
Finally, it is very important to trust your team. More often than not, managers don’t have faith in their team and constantly nag them for their progress and deliverables. Invariably, a shift to a remote workforce requires a gradual change in the organizational culture. Once you start believing in your employees and trust them, they will start taking ownership of their work. And, once a culture of ownership and self motivation kicks in, managing a remote team becomes a breeze.
These five practices are the basics that every organization, contemplating a long-term remote work strategy, must consider. Once you get the basics in place, you may want to explore more advanced strategies and practices that involve greater investment and leadership buy-in to promote team management.
Team management, whether online or offline, benefits when organizations employ and leverage different tools to create a positive experience for the team members. Based on the functional needs, different organizations can use different tools, while some can be common for all. Let’s quickly discuss a few areas where team management tools can promote performance and productivity.
With communication being one of the core pillars of effective team management, it is important for organizations to invest in tools that facilitate the same. Depending on the nature of scope of communication and collaboration, different team management tools should be explored. Asynchronous collaboration can be done over tools like Slack and Google docs. On the other hand, real time meetings can be hosted over Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, etc. Organizations can also leverage features like break out rooms and whiteboards to make communication engaging and participatory.
For teams to work effectively, being on the same page is very important. This becomes slightly tricky in case of remote work. Fortunately, there are plenty of project management tools like Trello, Asana, Jira where teams can seamlessly work together, track progress and stick to their timelines to achieve the deadlines.
Unless managers and leaders know what their employees and team members feel and are thinking, managing them effectively will be very difficult. Here, leveraging tools like SuperBeings will reap results. SuperBeings enables organizations to gauge employee pulse on a regular basis and provides action based insights for managers based on the responses received. It empowers leaders with the right steps, actions and insights to promote effective team management.
Bonding between team members is critical for effective team management. In conventional times, team members could simply bond over a cup of coffee. However, the trend saw a decline with the transition to remote work. Fortunately, with tools like Dive and Shuffle, team members can engage and interact with others who have shared interests and bond over similar likes and dislikes. This is a great way for team members to know more about each other and promote teamwork.
As we come to the conclusion, it is important to note that team management is a collaborative effort. While managers are responsible to sail the ship forward, senior leadership must provide them with the right tools and resources to navigate the way. At the same time, the onus lies with all the team members too, to make sincere efforts to work with their coworkers to the best of their abilities. A combination of the above mentioned tips and tricks, the right tools and a positive attitude is what organizations need to promote effective team management.
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If you are trying to design a continuous and comprehensive performance management system, you would know the importance of conducting a 360 degree feedback. However, to make this exercise most effective, you need to go beyond simply involving everyone in the process to getting the process right — most importantly asking the right feedback questions to each stakeholder. This article will focus on how to write 360 feedback questions that create maximum organizational impact.
Let us quickly start by understanding what you must include in your 360 feedback questions to make it more effective.
Read: How and when to conduct 360 degree feedback
Without wasting any time, let’s dive into the 10 tips that can help you in writing excellent and effective 360 feedback questions.
Keep the language easy to understand and avoid using technical jargon. Make sure everyone is able to gauge the same meaning of the question and the focus is not lost in translation.
Keep adding the questions list for your next 360 degree feedback to your records throughout the year.
Since 360 feedback should focus on all aspects of an employee, if you add questions at different times, they will be more relevant
Ensure that the questions don’t have an inherent bias or don’t push or influence the respondent to answer in a specific manner. Make sure that the questions can have varied options as answers and not a singular focus because that’s what you want as a result. Furthermore, the questions should not create a bias in the mind of the reader of any kind.
Focus on one specific attribute or competency for each question. Don’t try to include everything in a single question to keep the number of 360 feedback questions low. You will end up receiving responses for only a part of the question and it will confuse the respondent too. For instance, if you want to talk about collaboration, do not couple it with factors like leadership skills or problem solving.
Before you start framing the questions, identify the key competencies that are most important for your organization as well as the role. Competencies could include communication, innovation, strategic thinking, etc.
Make sure that as a whole, all the questions cover all aspects you want to gauge the employee on from an organizational and functional role perspective. However, don’t overstuff too many competencies, keep them relevant to the employee in question. For instance, a person in sales may not need a question on technology knowledge as a part of 360 feedback questions.
In addition to being specific, be clear on what you wish to gauge or understand with every question you ask. For instance, a question on whether or not the employee pays heed to the opinion of others can help understand the level of active listening and a spirit of inclusion.
You need to have a fair balance between open ended and close ended questions.
A very long or complicated process is likely to reduce participation and defeat the purpose. Therefore, keep the count of 360 feedback questions to a maximum of 30-40 and make it very easy to participate and complete the same. Preferably, disseminate it through your existing communication/ collaboration tools.
Finally, make sure that the questions are framed in a way that is simple to evaluate. Too complex evaluations might take too much time and delay the action and execution, leading to reduced faith and impact on 360 degree feedback.
To ensure that your questions are relevant and specific, you can start with writing 360 feedback questions for different situations and contexts. Put simply, in this section, we will focus on what you should be asking and when. It will also help you in picking the right questions for the right employees, instead of bombarding everyone with the same questions.
These questions will help you understand what your team members think about the overall management at your organization and the effectiveness of specific team leadership.
These questions can help you understand the level of communication efficiency in your organization to ensure there is no gap between intention and execution.
Use these questions to identify and nurture employees that show leadership potential to build an effective succession pipeline.
These questions can help you understand how committed your employees are towards the organization, which will impact their level of engagement and quality of work.
You can leverage these questions when you wish to understand which employees are quick to think on their feet and will be able to address problems/ challenges that might come their way.
These questions can help you gauge the level of alignment between what your organization stands for and the core values/ beliefs of your employees.
Read: Strategic goal alignment: How to align team and organizational goals
Focus on these questions when you want to understand how well your employees are able to connect with their peers and other stakeholders.
These final set of questions can help you gauge how efficiently the employees are able to get work done. This points to the presence of the right skills to utilize resources in the best way possible.
To keep the entire survey with 360 degree feedback questions interesting and engaging, you can experiment with different question formats and templates. While some of your questions can have simple Yes/No answers, some can have multiple choices along with room for providing open ended answers as well. Here is an easy to follow template you can leverage.
Key competency: Strategic decision making
Top line: The employee/ subject name is able to
Attributes:
Spectrum
Open ended questions
Once you roll out the survey with your 360 feedback questions and receive the answers, you need to analyze the responses to come up with a final report and plan of action. However, any response analysis is subject to biases and other factors which might put the validity and reliability of the report into question. Fortunately, you can leverage these following practices to eliminate such instances:
Before concluding this article, we would like to discuss the top 8 questions that most managers have when it comes to 360 degree feedback, highlighting concerns they may be having.
Highlight how the performance and feedback on the performance of others is likely to have an impact on their performance too. Make them believe they can be an integral part of the growth journey for their team members.
Make the feedback anonymous to prevent sugar coating. At the same time, do not rely upon a single review as the ultimate feedback for any employee. Analyze at least 2-3 feedback responses for each employee to get the real picture.
3. How to make the process time effective?
Leverage technology platforms to roll out the surveys and collect responses. Furthermore, you can rely on the NLP sentiment analysis to gauge insights from open ended questions in addition to trend generation based on quantitative questions.
Check out how SuperBeings can help you conduct seamless 360 degree feedback. Book a free demo today
Highlight the positive impact of participation as a whole. Make it an interesting part of the employee lifecycle. Provide employees designated time within their work schedule to provide feedback. Do not make it an added burden. Additionally, keep the process simple with not a lot of questions at once.
Depending on the nature of the organization you can decide on the level of anonymity. Facilitate anonymity will help you fetch greater and more authentic responses. However, sometimes, you might struggle with context in this case. Therefore, you should adopt an approach of flexible/ partial anonymity.
Create a business case for 360 degree feedback. Illustrate how it can lead to a better employee experience, strategic learning and development, greater employee retention and other aspects which can lead to better performance and productivity.
Ensure that your questions are neutral and don’t lead to a specific sentiment or response. For instance, if you want to gauge punctuality for an employee, don’t use statements like do you think the employee is always late to work, rather focus on how would you rate the punctuality and sense of time for the employee?
Try to conduct 360 feedback on a regular basis and not wait for the end of the year to ask all the questions. Maintain a cadence to gauge responses.
As we end this discussion, it is clear that if you want to write 360 feedback questions in an effective way — you need to adopt an all encompassing approach, taking into account the different aspects of employee attributes, performance, personality and behavior.
It is, therefore, ideal to leverage platforms like SuperBeings to help you roll out, gather and analyze the responses using NLP and automation for best results. You can leverage our best practices to not only get the questions right but to also enable your managers to facilitate employee development at the end of the process.
If interested, feel free to book a demo today. No initial commitment required.
How and when to conduct 360 degree feedback
In the recent years, there has been a lot of attention that is being given to employee feedback, performance reviews and evaluation as a part of the whole performance management system.
While a major focus has been to prepare managers to give feedback in a constructive and effective manner, paying attention to employee self evaluation is equally important. Knowing what self appraisal comments to use can play a major role in helping employees to effectively reflect and evaluate their performance and convey it effectively to the rest of the team.
The purposes of employee evaluation and performance review in general have been talked about time and again. However, self appraisal takes the process of evaluation at a very personal and individual level, leading to a more pronounced understanding of an employee’s performance. Some of the top benefits of employee self assessment include:
Read: Employee self assessment: How to write a great one
In the section above, we have talked about the purpose or the need of self evaluation mostly from the perspective of the employee. However, self appraisal, when done correctly, has equally compelling benefits for the team as well as managers. A quick snapshot is captured below:
With self appraisal, employees become active participants in their review and appraisal process, rather than simply being passive recipients. Consequently, they feel valued, motivated and the level of engagement increases. Furthermore, with greater engagement, levels of commitment, retention and productivity go up.
When employees take a step back to reflect on their performance with self appraisal, they become more receptive to diverse ideas. Put simply, in the absence of self reflection, they will have a hard time gauging where they need to improve. Consequently, they will be defensive when a manager or the team gives them feedback on the same. However, self evaluation will help them accept the gaps and be open to learning and growing.
When employees reflect on their performance and identify the development areas, they will don a problem solving hat on to accelerate their professional journey. Through the course of time, this problem solving attribute will become a part of their skill set which will benefit the team and the manager greatly.
As a result of greater alignment due to self reflection on the strengths and areas of development, teams will see a greater sense of accountability to bridge the gaps identified. Under conventional circumstances, performance improvement might be seen as just a tick in the box by employees. However, after self appraisal, employees truly acknowledge and accept the need to bridge those gaps and take greater ownership and accountability.
Now that you have an understanding of why self appraisal matters, let’s quickly look at how to make it most effective. If you are experimenting with self evaluation for the first time, it can be an overwhelming activity for your employees. It is human nature to feel uneasy when you’re expected to evaluate your own performance. However, if you provide your employees with some comments they can use for self evaluation as a starting point, you can make the journey easier for them.
Put simply, self appraisal comments are common statements that can be customized by your employees during the self evaluation process, especially, if they find themselves at a loss of words to describe their performance
These phrases are available for both strengths and areas of development to help employees paint a realistic picture of their performance. Here are the top 100 self appraisal phrases that you can use for different performance parameters.
Use these self phrases to reflect on your clarity of communication, willingness to listen to others, etc.
These self evaluation phrases reflect how reliable or dependable you are for your team members, especially under special circumstances.
Using these self appraisal phrases can help indicate how invested or engaged you are in taking ownership of work without being asked to at times.
Similar Read: 150+ performance review phrases for managers
The following self appraisal comments are important to help review your performance on the basis of how punctual and attentive you are.
Use these self evaluation phrases when you want to highlight your strengths/ areas of improvement of working with the team, your collaboration skills, etc.
Creativity self appraisal comments can help you in reflecting on how effectively you are able to come up with novel and innovative solutions to challenges and new ideas to augment the impact and value created.
The following phrase can create a picture of your quality of work and how much attention you pay while undertaking a particular task during your self reflection process.
You can use these self appraisal comments to illustrate how well you understand what is expected out of you and how well you are able to deliver on the same.
Customer satisfaction self evaluation performance phrases help gauge how effectively you are able to address customer requests or complaints that leads to a higher Net Promoter Score, brand credibility, etc.
Finally, these self-appraisal comments can help you highlight your growth plans towards your professional development and impact on the organization.
With a broad understanding of the more than 100+ self appraisal comments that you can use as a part of your self evaluation process, let’s move to this concluding section. Here, we will focus on sharing a few templates that employees can use to articulate their performance in an effective manner.
The self evaluation phrases mentioned above can be added at the right places in these templates to give a holistic picture of one’s performance. A few things to focus on include:
In the last <performance period>, I have successfully <activity/ initiative undertaken> which led to <tangible impact (metrics)> for the organization.
My focus was on <a detailed view of everything that was done> which resulted in <accomplishments>.
Overall, I believe that I have been able to create an impact by achieving <top 3 achievements> and seek to amplify the same in the future.
I believe that the last <performance period> has been full of learning and development for me.
While I was able to <quick snapshot of achievements>, I acknowledge that I need to pay attention to <areas of improvement>.
I believe that this focus will help me <intended outcome for improvement>.
Towards this, I will ensure that I consistently work towards <improvement plan (courses, behavioral changes)> to achieve <SMART goal>.
That said, self appraisal is an extremely crucial step of performance review. As a manager you must encourage your team members to provide honest reflection on their performance without being afraid of any negative consequences. Apart from providing the self appraisal comments mentioned above, you can also use assessment tools to make self appraisal a common practice within the organization.
Custom Pulse Surveys by SuperBeings can help you with understanding their needs and help you support them better. If interested, book a free demo today.
Employee Self Assessment: How to write a great one
150+ performance review phrases for managers
How to use custom pulse surveys to enhance employee experience
Holistic performance reviews are integral for any organization that seeks to create a high performance culture. However, the nature of performance appraisals has undergone significant transformation with a focus on 360 feedback and review.
One of the key pillars for the same is employee self assessment and self appraisal. Through the course of this article, we will share with you why self assessment is important and how you, as a manager, can help your employees get it right to facilitate maximum impact.
As the name suggests, employee self assessment or self reflection is the practice or process where employees reflect on and assess their performance over a period of time to identify accomplishments, development areas and other performance aspects
The aim of self assessment is to get the employees’ view of their performance and add the information and data to manager and peer feedback. This can enable organizations to get a holistic understanding of the employee performance and gauge the overall contribution, some of which might be invisible from a macro view. Here are a few reasons why employee self assessment as a tool for performance review makes sense for growing organization:
With the rise of continuous performance management and regular review and appraisal, your self assessment process should follow a similar approach.
Instead of pushing employees to assess and reflect on their performance at the end of the year, you should encourage them to conduct regular self assessment
On one hand, regular and continuous performance linked self appraisal by employees will ensure that no part of their performance goes unnoticed. On the other hand, it will constantly give them a chance to reflect on their performance and improve on the development areas on the go, instead of waiting for the year end. Invariably, they will embark on the path of development and improvement at an accelerated pace.
Here, if you leverage employee pulse surveys which are short and frequent in nature, you can ensure consistent and continuous self reflection from employees. With as frequent as one question a day, you can encourage your employees to build a culture of performance-oriented self assessment.
With self assessment and reflection being a fairly new practice to performance management, many organizations and employees struggle with getting it right.
While some believe that employees might see it as a chance to explain their bad performance, others believe that it might end up biasing the manager’s perspective.
However, when done right, employee self assessment can be an extremely powerful tool to facilitate a high performance culture. Here are a few tips to get your employees conduct performance self assessment the right way:
Encourage your employees to be open and honest. Employees must not see self assessment as a place for self aggrandizing in the hope of a better rating, rather an honest assessment of one’s performance.
For self evaluation to be effective, your employees need to reflect on their performance without the worry of being penalized for identifying areas of development and improvement
It is important to not see self assessment as the sole foundation for promotions and appraisals, but rather as a journey towards growth.
Next, persuade your employees to reflect on their OKR performance. The idea is not only to assess what has been achieved with OKR grading. It should also include reflections from OKRs about the possible enablers and blockers to further refine them for the next performance period. The employee must be guided to reflect on what helped achieve the OKRs and what other support is required as well as what he or she would personally like to work towards.
Download: Free OKR grading template
Third, when self assessing for performance review, employees must incorporate feedback from their conversations with managers and peers. If your organization has a culture of regular 1:1s, this will be very easy for your workforce. The idea here is to motivate your employees to reflect on what feedback they have been able to gauge and whether or not according to them their performance is a reflection of the same. 360 degree feedback can also be a helpful tool for employees to understand all aspects of their performance.
Factors like what did the manager praise about their performance or what did a coworker thank them for are very important for self assessment.
Read: Top 50 1:1 meeting questions for great managers
Finally, as a part of performance review self assessment, employees need to reflect on the challenges and opportunities, both internal and external. Internally, they need to assess their attributes, skill sets and aspirations and align them with the expectations to gauge their level of performance. Similarly, external factors like resources, team support and their impact on performance needs to be documented.
When you share these above mentioned tips with your team members, they are bound to ask questions about the best practices for writing or filling up self assessment surveys in the most effective way. We have you covered for that as well. Here are a few quick tips to help your employees write effective self assessment:
Read: How to go from performance management to employee development
If you look at these best practices closely, you will realize that the key to writing effective self assessment also lies in the questions that you ask.
Simply asking an open ended question like reflecting on your performance will seldom yield any substantial responses, mainly because your team members will struggle with starting their answers
Therefore, we have compiled a list of questions and potential answer prompts/ templates to help you make self assessment a part of your performance review process effectively.
Also read: 150+ useful performance review phrases to start using today
Ensuring impact with self assessment is not only dependent on your team members. There are several ways in which managers of an organization can help build a culture of effective self evaluation.
Create an open culture where employee self reflection does not become the sole tool to penalize or promote employees, see it as an extended glimpse of performance
As we come to an end, it is clear that employee self assessments are an integral part of performance reviews and if conducted in the right manner have the potential to drive a high performing culture. However, we understand that administering and facilitating participation for self assessment can be daunting, especially for a growing organization.
Fortunately, custom pulse surveys by SuperBeings with automated sending and reminders, along with NLP based sentiment analysis can take care of the same for you. If interested, book a free demo today to learn more.
How to use custom pulse surveys to enhance employee experience