How to conduct virtual performance review meetings

By Christian Frantz Hansen, Implement Consulting Group

Going virtual

Running a tight ship is a critical part of making it through rough seas. Thus, for organizations to make it through the current turmoil, limiting the effects on performance management procedures is essential.  If the usual performance reviews are halted, organizations risk losing track of where they are heading, with potential catastrophic consequences as a result.

A simple yet effective way to keep the cadence and pace of the organization’s performance management initiatives is to conduct virtual performance review meetings. This necessitates that the performance management organization knows how to leverage virtual tools and facilitation techniques.

“Whether driven by the current COVID-19 lock-down, geographical distance or other barriers, performance review meetings can easily be conducted virtually.”

To make the most of a virtual performance review meeting, work your way through the five steps below.

Step 1: Purpose

To ensure alignment and a common ground among the participants, it is critical to convey a simple and intuitive purpose of the meeting. Everybody attending the virtual performance review should know and understand the intent/objective. In a virtual meeting where it is difficult to dissect people’s mannerisms and body language, your message needs to be even more clear than usual. Ask yourself:

• Is this an incident-based performance review or a part of the natural performance review cycle?
• What is the expected deliverables to come out of the performance review?
• What critical business decisions are expected to be made as part of the performance review?

Step 2: Participants

To ensure the necessary competencies, decision authority and operational insight, it is important to consider what participants to include. A performance review meeting should always include employees who have the authority and ability to act on the performance insights. That is, a performance review creates little value if it does not lead to action. Ask yourself:

• Who is needed to make relevant decisions and initiative action based on the performance review?
• Are any of the participants in need of assistance to participate virtually?
• Can any resistance be expected due the virtual nature of the meeting?

Step 3: Virtual tool

To create the best virtual environment, it is important to recognize the pros and cons of different virtual communication tools. Microsoft Teams is good for smalls groups, Skype for medium groups and Zoom is preferable for larger groups. It’s important to select the right communication tool to support the desired discussions, collaboration and decision-making at the performance review. Ask yourself:

• How can we virtually share our performance measures, performance dashboards etc.?
• How do we leverage the features of the virtual tool to support discussions about the performance?

Step 4: Format

To ensure engagement and active participation in a virtual setup, it is important to involve participants regularly through deliberately designed exercises and micro-involvements. Participants should be actively involved at a much higher frequency as is needed in normal physical meetings. A high level of involvement is most effectively achieved by leveraging features such virtual whiteboards, polls, quizzes, and virtual break-out rooms. Ask yourself:

• How do we involve the participants by letting them work with the performance insights?
• How can we make sure that everyone is nudged to participate actively?
• Do we need breakout sessions for smaller groups to focus on various parts of our performance metrics?

Step 5: Roles

In virtual meetings, you run the risk of what is called the diffusion of responsibility – the sociopsychological phenomenon whereby everyone assumes that someone else will take responsibility for action. Being distanced from each other, people unfortunately tend to hide behind their cameras and take less responsibility for action. As a virtual facilitator, be sure to outline clear roles for all participants to make sure that everyone feels obligated to take responsibility for acting on the performance insights.

Ask yourself:

1. Who is responsible and accountable for each performance measure to be reviewed?
2. Who has the authority to initiate mitigating actions to counter negative performance?
3. Who is responsible for executing on the decisions made throughout the performance review?

Preparation is key!

As first said by Benjamin Franklin; “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”. Experience shows that proper preparation requires twice the time for a virtual meeting compared to what is needed for a traditional physical meeting. Thus, be sure to set aside the extra time for preparation before going virtual. 

Need help?

If you need assistance with preparation and execution of virtual performance reviews or other performance management meetings, please reach out to me at [email protected]