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Performance Reviews Help Create Great Employees
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Article 7: Keep Documentation
Performance reviews should be thoroughly documented for two reasons.
First, a written record of your assessment can help keep employees moving toward improvement. Second, a paper trail can protect you against possible wrongful discharge lawsuits if the employee needs to be terminated in the future.
Keeping track of all that paperwork, though, can be a hassle. Worse, paper can become lost. Here’s one more business area where the Internet is entering the picture. Scores of online performance review documentation systems have popped up over the past five years. (Run a Google search on “performance reviews.”)
“Online tools are useful for organizations that are small and do not have a human resources department,” says Lisa Bianco, president of EchoSpan, an Atlanta-based performance consulting firm which offers one such system. “We estimate that the average business can reduce the time invested in performance reviews by some 75 percent by replacing traditional paper-based systems with online systems.”
Many such systems are economical for the small employer. At Echospan, the cost averages $85 per year per employee for businesses with as few as one or two workers.
Online tools can also track your assessments, e-mailing you a tickler when it’s time for a scheduled review.
You can also set reminders for ad hoc feedback. Maybe you want an e-mail reminder to provide each employee with an informal assessment every 60 days.
Finally, online tools can provide you with instant access to historical reviews when review time comes around. There is no need to spend time rummaging through old paper files and hoping a critical review was not accidentally lost or deliberately sabotaged. Ease and thoroughness of access can also be critical as a defense when you are the target of lawsuits for wrongful discharge.
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