How Formal Quarterly Check-Ins Boost Employee Engagement

In my most recent article, "Developing a Habit of Delivering Frequent but Informal Feedback," I introduced Lindsay, an HR director at an aerospace manufacturing and design firm with 200 employees.

Lindsay was concerned that her analytical, introverted management team may not be communicating enough with staff engineers and workers in support roles. Her training intervention focused on successfully helping her senior executives and front-line operational leaders deliver frequent, informal feedback. But Lindsay wasn't satisfied. She wanted to expand her focus to include delivering more formal feedback throughout the year - not just at annual review time. She started to explore coaching. 

Employing the Coaching Feedback Model

Coaches - internal or external - focus on building self-confidence in those they mentor. The leader-as-coach model rests on the premise that providing rolling, real-time feedback on the various dimensions of performance, including conduct, reliability, collaboration, agility and innovation, creates opportunities for managers to focus on strengths and goals, not just historical job performance.

Likewise, coaches "tease" answers out of those they coach; they don't simply give answers. In other words, coaches teach employees how to fish, making them successful on their own by asking appropriate questions and sharing insights that stem from experience and wisdom. If organizations can find a cadence through which leaders can coach and mentor rather than tell their employees what to do, then a healthier sense of career and professional development, goal setting, and agility can be embraced to meet today's challenging times.

"Core to the coaching process are the reflective questions that coaches ask of their direct reports," said Michele D'Amico, founder and CEO of Vetta Consultants in the greater Los Angeles area. " 'Would you want to work for you?' and 'If the whole company followed your lead, would you be happy with where you took it?' are sample questions that drive deeper career introspection and that help senior and emerging leaders raise awareness about their leadership impact, communication style and team-building abilities. In short, it's where all leadership roads coalesce, driving greater self-awareness and accountability." 

Add Quarterly Formal Feedback to the Mix

In 2011, Adobe made its famous departure from traditional annual performance reviews and declared them dead. Its logic: Annual reviews were little more than a paper chase replete with outdated and sometimes unjustified information that left managers and employees feeling demotivated and resentful. Adobe's alternative: Constant assessment and real-time feedback. 

Such frequent check-ins obviated the need for annual performance reviews, in Adobe's opinion, and made career and professional development a living, breathing element of organizational and cultural change. From that point forward, a number of other high-tech and professional consulting firms followed suit, to the point that by 2014, 12 percent of U.S. companies had eliminated annual performance reviews, according to the former Corporate Executive Board, now part of Gartner.

On the one hand, organizations that worked on project-based assignments, such as accounting firms, management consultants and professional services firms, could reasonably provide real-time individual and team feedback at the conclusion of large-scale projects. Intermittent reviews from senior team leaders could focus on collaboration, agility, self-direction and results orientation, for example.

"Yet, most organizations aren't designed around large-scale, time-bound projects or client engagements, making such intermittent feedback difficult to carry out," D'Amico said. "In fact, in a number of cases where performance reviews were abolished, employees returned to HR asking to have them reinstated so they would at least have some feedback about how they were doing and what management thought about them."

Depending on the type of work you do and the natural feedback windows that exist, however, abolishing annual performance reviews at your company could make sense.

"In most organizations, however, it's more of a both-and rather than either-or proposition," D'Amico advised. "If you follow Wall Street's lead, for example, publicly traded companies provide formal quarterly 10Q reports that result in the annual 10K report. Many organizations would be wise to apply a similar quarterly approach and rhythm to formal feedback that constitutes the 'annual' performance appraisal program, making formal feedback a core tenet of career and professional development, one of the most often-cited priorities of Gen Y Millennials and Gen Z Zoomers." 

Reinventing Performance Management

The key to success lies in how employers implement such programs. "The goal isn't to put more work onto leaders' plates, it's to create the right and certain circumstances where employees can motivate themselves, focus on their achievements, and employ quarterly goals and measurable outcomes to ensure their success," said Mike McCartney, president of McCartney Coaching in Toledo, Ohio. 

"By placing the responsibility on employees - executive, professional and potentially even hourly - to schedule the time on their manager's calendar and prepare the agenda, employers are treating adults like adults," he said.

Employers likewise create and sustain expectations surrounding performance, achievement, and career and professional development, which are often the glue that binds employees to their companies over the longer term. "Even more important, it sets the leader up as a natural coach and mentor rather than a unilateral decision-maker and disciplinarian, which is where managers at all levels want to be," McCartney said.

Further, results and highlights from these formal quarterly feedback meetings can then inform the individual's annual report, scorecard or performance appraisal, making the annual review more of an aggregate look back on performance and achievement rather than vague recollections.

"By focusing on performance and achievements throughout the calendar year, managers can provide more timely constructive feedback and then focus the 'annual review' on future goals and career and professional development opportunities, which tends to be much healthier than looking back only on performance history, where many organizations are stuck today," McCartney said.

If quarterly reviews can indeed provide windows of opportunity for timely performance feedback and goal setting (in addition to real time feedback, of course, as Lindsay learned), then a much more fluid dynamic can take hold, one in which communication thrives and employees receive the recognition and course-corrective feedback that they need to excel in their careers. 

Lindsay, for one, will initiate this new quarterly rhythm with her own team. Her next step: Arming her managers with the optimal questions to spur engaging quarterly self-assessment conversations so that operational leaders feel more comfortable and confident in their coaching roles. What an exciting initiative for a new year and one that's highly likely to garner kudos from management and employees alike.

Paul Falcone (www.PaulFalconeHR.com) is a frequent contributor to SHRM Online and has served in a range of senior HR roles at such companies as Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, Time Warner and City of Hope Medical Center. He's a corporate leadership trainer, certified executive coach, international keynote speaker and the author of the five-book Paul Falcone Workplace Leadership Series (HarperCollins Leadership and Amacom). His other bestsellers include 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees, 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems, 96 Great Interview Questions to Ask Before You Hire and 2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews.