Having spent 25 years in the tax and accounting industry, I have learned many things but one always stands out to me – building a strong team both within our business and our clients businesses. We build strong teams by listening. Working with our team to achieve our mutually agreed upon goals.
How do we do this? We ask! Annual performance reviews should be outlawed, in my opinion. Bi-annual or quarterly reviews are much more useful, real time and actionable. By a higher frequency of reviews, we stay current and in touch with our team. So July is always mid year check in time for me and my team (and my clients teams!).
We implemented using a 3rd party objective person to do the mid year interviews with my team as I found my team spoke more openly with the 3rd party than with me. Its just a different relationship and the investment has proven worth it every time. Then the 3rd party summarizes the results and feedback and we do a general all team meeting where we address comments, concerns and questions without putting any one team member in the spotlight. Where there are individual specific issues that arise, we deal with those separately.
How are you handling performance reviews? What outcomes have been beneficial?
Let me know if you’d like me to come in and work with your team on performance reviews. The investment has a massive ROI on retention and productivity and hence, profits!