How to Make Your Peer Reviews More Effective
A poorly planned review process not only wastes money and resources but also results in ineffective peer reviews. Thus, organizations must make sure that their review workflows will be both efficient and effective. Here, we present a few tips that help you make your peer reviews more effective.
Select peers wisely
Always remember that the review will be conducted by employees – the individual who would play a significant role in the review process. Hence, you have to make sure that you classify the peer groups in a balanced manner.
The most crucial part is to choose the employees that you should get information from regarding the person being assessed. For this, you must create certain guidelines, such as qualifications, that the employee must have.
Define what your employees must have and align them with the company’s core values
Before setting up the peer reviews, determine the characteristics that your best performers must have. You need to do this because you may not know what questions to ask if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.
In a peer review system, you need to ask questions to the employees about their peers. But if you don’t have standards to lead you, then you won’t know what to ask them. You would be simply wasting time asking questions that don’t give you the information you require.
Allow customizations within the solution
The idea of setting up a process is to have something that will be adhered to when conducting the peer reviews. But if you design a system in such a way that it can’t be modified to suit specific needs, then it won’t be as effective as you’d want.
When dealing with a specific workforce, you may have to take a different approach instead of asking regular questions that you have already created. This feasibility should be given. A system that doesn’t allow modifications makes the peer review system ineffective, and the results unreliable.
Use technology and new methods
No need to stick to conventional methods to get an evaluation from employees about their peers. Today, social media is a platform often used by employees related to work. You can integrate the use of social media and other similar tools in your performance review system.
One of the main advantages of this is the impression that it creates among employees of how management is monitoring the things that are done.
Make reviews interesting for employees
In several organizations, employees view reviews as a punishment or, if not, something that leads up to one. This makes them suspicious of anything related to the conduct of a review.
If you could find a way to make the peer review process interesting, then by all means, do so. It should not be a chore for everyone involved. Instead, make it into a program of change or a way to show appreciation and give credit to whom it is due.
Ensure that everyone is involved
The peer review is not just for an employee and his or her peers. Since an employee’s performance affects the entire company, everyone should be involved.
Management creates peer review processes to assist and accelerate employee reviews and evaluation so that they are not required to be directly involve in it. But it does not mean they’d have nothing to do with the review process completely.
It is essential to restate that peer reviews must engage everyone, although in different roles. To managers and supervisors, the review system should be reinforced with their own self-reviews and assessments.
Top management must empower the managers to track the results. Restate the importance of being involved, so they will be more motivated to contribute in ensuring that the peer reviews are effective.
Back the reviews with quick and regular recognition
It is essential to have a quick follow-up to the conduct of the peer review process. It doesn’t make sense to conduct an assessment today, and then provide recognition a year later. Relevance is significantly reduced if you wait a long time. If employees find that there is quick and regular recognition after the peer review, they will be more interested in being involved in the process.
The first step in creating an effective review process is to create a peer review workflow. Day by day, you can move forward in shaping and enhancing your system. You shouldn’t expect a perfectly working system from day one, because you may find something to change now and then. The crucial part is to set a peer review system in place, execute it, and continuously improve upon it.
