Conducting regular performance reviews is essential to the success of a business in every industry, especially in construction. Not only do they allow employers to assess the performance of the individual members of their team, but they’re also a great way for both reviewers and reviewees to gather crucial information that can help both parties better achieve their goals. But, while these reviews are incredibly useful, if you want your performance reviews to be a success, you’ll need to understand just what the primary purpose of performance reviews is in the first place.
What is the Primary Purpose of Performance Reviews?
Unfortunately, answering this question is a bit more complicated than you may initially think. While it’s easy to say that the primary purpose of performance reviews in construction is to review individual performance, this is largely an oversimplification and doesn’t really help you gain any additional insight into the potential power that a performance review can have.
In reality, performance reviews have many purposes, all of which are equally important to the effectiveness of the review, the future performance of the reviewee, and the overall success of your construction business. So, in addition to reviewing performance, here are just a few of the many other purposes that performance reviews in construction fullfill.
Identify Top Performers And Team Members that May Be Better Utilized Elsewhere
Whether you want to call it a purpose or a simple by-product that comes along with reviewing individual performance in general, performance reviews allow business owners to identify top performers as well as team members that they may not be utilizing properly.
Construction projects, in particular, involve a lot of different moving parts and if you aren’t using the skills your team has as efficiently as possible, it can easily lead to projects not getting done on time or on budget.
Performance reviews present the perfect opportunity to gauge a worker’s effectiveness at performing the wide variety of different tasks they are responsible for. This not only allows you to reward top performers for a job well done, but it can also lead to huge revelations that can help you better utilize the specific skills of the team members who aren’t doing as well.
Identify Goals and Facilitate Professional Growth
Another major purpose of the performance review is to identify an individual’s goals. While you may have some workers who are content with being where they are, chances are many of your team members have professional goals that they want to achieve down the line.
Personal goals are a huge motivator, and Ignoring these goals is a great way to discourage your team members from working their hardest, but that’s not all. By identifying a team member’s goals, you may also be able to point them toward professional development opportunities that help your team members achieve those goals.
This is just one of the many reasons why performance reviews are so important, as if you’re employees are achieving their goals and feel that they have your support, you’ll be able to keep them happier and encourage loyalty and worker retention while also potentially getting a lot more quality work out of that team member in future projects.
Assess Team Dynamics
Another main purpose of the employee review is to assess team dynamics. Construction projects require a ton of close collaboration between the teams and people working on a particular project, and if those team dynamics are off, it can lead to inefficiencies that negatively affect your business.
There’s no shortage of problems that can cause bad team dynamics, from ineffective leadership and poor communication to simply having the wrong people working on the wrong aspects of a project.
However, performance reviews give you an opportunity to delve into the finer details of how your workers feel about working in a specific role and how they think that the overall team dynamic could change for the better.
How to Write Employee Performance Reviews
Now that you know all about the many purposes of performance reviews and why performance reviews are so important, you may be wondering how exactly to write effective employee performance reviews that help you ensure you are able to get the best results.
It all starts with the questions you ask. One big mistake that many reviewers make is structuring their review and the questions they ask as some sort of checklist. You should avoid this at all costs, as this isn’t just boring for you and the reviewee, but it can also lead you to miss out on essential information that you could potentially use to your advantage.
In general, you want to do your best to write questions that create a dialogue between you and the worker that you are reviewing. For example, don’t simply ask an individual how they would rate their performance over the last quarter. Instead, ask them about the accomplishments that they are most proud of or what goals they may have failed to achieve, as this will give you much more insight into the mindset of your team members.
Another crucial thing to consider when writing a construction performance review is what goals your team members want to achieve in the future. Achieving goals is key to staying motivated and maintaining morale, and by discussing goals with your workers, you’ll be able to better help them achieve those goals and keep your team happier and more productive.
Lastly, when writing a performance review, you’ll need to prepare to provide actionable feedback. If you’re asking questions that don’t lead anywhere, there’s a much smaller chance that your team’s performance will improve. So, while you can’t write feedback upfront, ensure that you’re setting yourself up to be able to provide a clear path forward.