Performance reviews can be a period of absolute drag or an opportunity to reflect on performance and reward people.
When it comes to the traditional annual review, how can you summarize a whole year of work and ensure you don’t fall into the frequency bias pitfall and focus on the last 3-4 months? Or, on the other hand, avoid writing the “War and Peace” of performance reviews?
One way to avoid either scenario is to segment the year into two halves and do a mid-year review.
This way you won’t have to make CliffNotes of a year of your team member’s performance; you can focus on their development instead.
Personally, I think that mid-year reviews can be very effective at refocusing employees on their goals and realigning with company goals.
To that end, I’m going to go over the structure and content as well as general tips and tricks for running a great mid-year review.
How To Structure Your Review Process To Include Mid-Year Review
The good thing about the mid-year review is that, if you already do annual performance reviews, you don’t have to change your performance management process too much.
However, certain changes are needed. Some operational, some in the general approach to reviews.
A few questions to answer when thinking about the structure:
What is the purpose of splitting the reviews?
You must go into the reviews with the purpose of what you want to gain and what the output should be from each review—both for the managers and the employees.
Should it be development points and goals, or should the output be more intangible and qualitative like inspiration? You decide!
What will be the impact on employees?
There are two major axes of impact you need to consider: financial and retentive.
On the financial side, decide whether people will be eligible for a promotion during both reviews, just one review, at any time. What about regular pay raises?
On the retentive side, what does it mean when people are overachieving or underperforming? Is it 2 cycles and you’re out, is it that they have only one 6-month cycle to improve their performance?
For the overachievers, do they need to wait a certain number of cycles to get a promotion?
Will there be a difference between the reviews?
There are two main options here. One is to have the reviews be the same, making your review process truly bi-annual.
The other will be to make one review more thorough and the other more of a “check-in”.
Different circumstances make a company environment more suitable for one than the other.
For example, faster-paced companies that go through a lot of projects in a short space of time can benefit from having bi-annual reviews.
How To Approach A Bi-Annual Review
If you want to have your review process be once every 6 months to capture a fast-paced environment, or have more regular performance milestones for managing people up or out, then here are a few things to bear in mind:
Shorter prompts
Think about making the prompts suitable for a shorter time period (I will go over good prompts below) e.g. if you have a prompt that asks the manager to highlight achievements, make them 2-3 instead of 6.
Similarly, for things like development points, do not produce a laundry list of things an employee needs to improve.
How many can they realistically improve in 6 months, especially more significant development points?
Keep it focused
Do not ask for the prompts to go into excruciating detail about the last 6 months of a person’s work. Instead keep them focused on outcomes/achievements, development points, and goals.
What has been done, and what is yet to be done?
Make it a conversation and multi-directional
Making performance reviews more frequent necessitates a tweaking of the content.
Often, if not trained well, managers will tend to do what they do in an annual review and come in with an overwhelming amount of feedback for their team members.
Not only is that an unpleasant process that robs the agency from direct reports, but now it’s more frequent too!
To make it a productive conversation, lay out your feedback in the written portion of your review, but open the review meeting with questions like “What do you think about my evaluation of your work?” or “Where have I missed context or more information about your performance, can you help me fill out these gaps?”.
Additionally, ask about more detail about their feedback to you and help them feel like you do value their feedback.
How To Approach A “Check-In” Style Review
If you want to keep it more lightweight you can do a “light-mode” review.
This can be a more thorough 1-1 where you still look back on the goals and have a conversation about how your direct report is doing.
Basically, you dedicate one of your 1-1s to the topic of your direct report’s development.
You should still send the direct report prompts beforehand to help prepare, and you should prepare with some more general observations before your more “robust” 1-1.
However, this style of review is more for the benefit of the employee vs. it being a comprehensive review of their work impacting their compensation and retention.
Prompts/Questions
In my experience, having a great question to prompt both managers and direct reports is essential because a discussion is the goal (not a report).
I’d recommend having a few questions as starting prompts and using follow-ups as part of the discussion, or as a guide on what the direct report or the manager should focus on when talking about the prompt.
For example, if you’re asking about goals, the follow-up questions will be about the challenges they foresee and what support they need to overcome them.
Direct report prompts
Self-reflection and achievements
Prompt: What 2-3 accomplishments are you most proud of so far over the last 6 months?
Follow-ups/detail questions:
- Which goals have you met or exceeded and what helped you succeed?
- What challenges have you encountered and how did you overcome them?
- What skills or strengths have you developed or used most in the past six months?
Goal and role alignment
Prompt: How are you progressing against the goals we agreed during your last review?
Follow-ups/detail questions:
- Are there any current goals that need adjustment based on changing priorities?
- How does your work align with the company’s goals or values?
- Is there any aspect of your role where you feel misaligned or unclear about expectations?
Development and growth
Prompt: What skills or knowledge do you want to develop in the coming months?
Follow-ups/detail questions:
- What support, resources, or training would help you achieve your goals?
- Are there any projects or areas you would like to be more involved in?
Prompt: What are your key goals for the rest of the year, and what’s your plan to achieve them?
Follow-ups/detail questions:
- How can I (or the team) better support you in achieving your goals?
- Are there any blockers affecting your growth, motivation, or engagement?
- What would make you feel successful at the end of the next 6 months?
Manager feedback
Prompt: What have been your observations or experiences about working with your manager?
Follow-ups/detail questions:
- What has been positive about working with your manager?
- Where can they improve?
- How can they support you more?
Manager prompts
For managers, the prompts can be quite similar but keep them focused on achievements and development areas.
This allows both sides to talk about the same topics from their perspectives and come in to compare notes.
If you’re a well-working team, you’ll find that you’re aligned on most things, but there will always be something that either the manager or the direct report will think about differently than the other.
This could be the manager being proud of certain achievements the direct report didn’t think about much, or goals they haven’t recognised.
Achievements
Prompt: What 2-3 accomplishments of your direct report over the last 6 months do you want to highlight?
- Why do these accomplishments in particular stand out?
Prompt: How is the person performing against expectations?
- Why have they been given this “grade”?
Goal and role alignment
Prompt: How is your direct report progressing against the goals agreed upon during your last review?
Follow-ups/detail questions
- Are there any current goals that need adjustment based on changing priorities?
- How does their work align with the company’s goals or values?
Development and growth
Prompt: What skills or knowledge does your direct report need to develop in the coming months?
Follow-ups/detail questions
- What examples are there of the development areas in their work?
- What are the exact gaps you see?
4-Step Mid-Year Review Process
1. Schedule the meeting
Setting a deadline well before you start the prep will help both you and your direct report work towards the goal of a successful review together. This is why you should start with putting the review meeting in the calendar as far ahead as possible.
In the invite, clearly set out purpose and what the prep each of you must do beforehand i.e. filling out a review doc and reading through it. Also, set out an agenda including items like discussing the review and agreeing on goals.
I’d recommend the meeting to be at least an hour but no more than 90 mins. That lets you cover topics in just enough detail as to not skip out on essential detail.
2. Prepare for the review
Whichever type of review you’re carrying out, the best way to approach it is for both managers and direct reports to write out a response to a set of prompts before the actual meeting.
These responses can then be a pre-read to the meeting which both parties complete and then discuss in more detail during the review.
This makes sure that the eventual review meeting can get down to having a productive discussion as soon as possible.
That way the process becomes:
- Direct report fills out their self-reflection
- The manager fills out their evaluation (optionally the manager can also gather peer feedback)
- Both docs are shared with the other and both have time to read through the full review
- Meeting to discuss the review and agree on goals for the next 6 months.
3. Conduct the meeting
Nothing should be too much of a surprise, but you never know how people will take some feedback. This is why you should always have the meeting in a private space e.g. a meeting room or the equivalent space.
Initially, listen with the intent to understand more: How did they find your feedback when you shared it with them? Any issues? Anything they may have not mentioned in the review on their side?
Finally, be empathetic. You’re more likely going to get the buy-in from people about stretch goals and changes if they feel like they’ve been listened to and the manager understands their point of view.
4. Follow up with the employee
Don’t forget to thank your direct report about their feedback at the end as well—it may have not been easy for them to do that.
To wrap up, confirm next steps. This could be potentially another meeting to break down any larger goals agreed to in the review into more manageable chunks. It could also be an agreement to follow up in 1-1s.
Make sure they know that you will be with them along the way and you are not there to just poke holes in their skillset twice a year.
8 Tips For Effective Mid-Year Reviews
There’s a real danger that reviews can become a checklist and a box to tick every 6 months, here’s how to avoid that from happening.
1. Keep in mind the goals
For example:
- Helping direct reports and managers improve
- Acknowledging hard work and results
- The outputs of the review should be clear goals and plans for development.
2. Use examples
Only mention what can be evidenced, examples are your best friend. If your direct report sees that your critiques for them are based on “vibes”, that is a surefire way to lose trust.
3. Be concise
Keep reviews concise and to the point, this will help get the most important things for the manager and direct report across and not muddle the issues.
For example if you have a piece of critical feedback you can mention 1-2 examples of where this has come up, do not bring a laundry list.
If you are also too verbose or use too much “softening” language, this message will get lost on how important it is that they change or stay the course on a particular point.
4. Don’t skip the prep
As with most things, prep is important, even if it does take time. Proper prep means that your eventual meeting will be a lot more productive and you will need to spend less time explaining context so you can get down to a real discussion.
5. Follow up, follow up, and follow up
Consistently checking in with your direct report in your 1-1s is important to make sure that they feel supported and acknowledged throughout.
That way they can see that managers are truly invested in their development. Don’t let your observations in your reviews be just a one-and-done deal.
While reviews are a good time to pause and reflect, feedback should be timely and continuous.
6. Ensure prioritization
Both direct reports and managers should really put time and effort into each review. It should be more than a 20-minute task to respond to the questions above.
Review season may mean doing some overtime, so keeping a good track record during your 1-1s will be your savior as many points for the review will emerge from these.
7. Keep it a two-way communication
The review itself should be a discussion, not the space for the manager to give a laundry list of improvements for the employee.
8. Document everything
Keep tabs during the year of each review to track progress. Personally, I keep a link to the review doc in the 1-1 doc for easy reference and a reminder.
Closing Thoughts
Mid-year reviews are a really effective way to move towards more frequent and timely feedback that helps each individual pivot easier in their development and move onto new skills.
This in turn can yield faster pivots for the company and the ability to withstand market changes, client changes, etc.
Ultimately every company has the opportunity to choose how to manage their team’s performance.
There’s scope to experiment and there are many schools of thought on how to conduct performance reviews and the frequency etc. For example, some companies even opt for quarterly reviews.
However, one thing is for sure, you need to create mechanisms to give and receive feedback and uphold them.
As long as you bring the team along for the journey, I am sure they will be behind in embracing more frequent feedback and opportunities for growth and promotions!