Expectations and Accountability

Communicating Performance Expectations: Make it a Habit!

Managers, are you keeping performance notes on meetings you have with your employees throughout the year? Do you consider the formal performance evaluation a summary of these discussions? Has the feedback you’ve included in the evaluation already been discussed throughout the evaluation period?

If you haven’t already started keeping these notes, now is the time to begin preparations for evaluations that may occur six to 12 months from now. It is important to make sure employees understand performance expectations. Your discussions should be ongoing! Problems can occur because managers may not always set and communicate completely clear expectations. Keeping ongoing notes of performance discussions will help to ensure that expectations have been communicated and are understood.

Make communicating expectations a habit. Make discussing performance a habit. By doing this, you will be providing meaningful, actionable feedback and information discussed during the performance evaluation meeting will not not be a surprise.