Should HR Be Part of the Employee Review Process?

As an HR professional, you have a hand in a million different parts of the business.

On any given day you might be recruiting the right people, updating core policies or putting out interpersonal fires.

But when it comes to sitting down and evaluating the performance of your employees, just how involved should you be?

The Fine Line between Autonomy and Fairness

It's impossible to overemphasize the importance of fairness in creating an engaging and productive work environment. In fact, it's one of the top criteria for determining which organizations rank among the best places to work. And as an HR leader, you are your employees' chief advocate for fairness in the workplace.

But autonomy is of equal importance. Employees need feedback in order to have a strong sense of direction and satisfaction at work, but it's all for naught if your appraisal process makes them feel micromanaged or micro-analyzed.

Here are a few ways HR leaders can ensure fairness in the employee appraisal process, without breathing over your managers' shoulders, or having to sit in on every single meeting.

Design a Fair, Simple System

Any performance appraisal process that relies too heavily on either HR or managers, probably isn't as fair as you think it is. Design your system to ask the right people the right questions, so you can step back and let the team leaders do their jobs.

If your system is plagued with bottlenecks, meet with managers to get an idea for how they would structure the appraisal process if they were given complete free reign. In many cases, their ideas for a simpler process can inform some small but powerful changes to help win back time for your employees, executive team and HR. But of course, make sure you always view their suggestions through the lens of fairness, as only HR truly can.

Coach Your Managers

We've said before that great managers are great coaches. But who coaches the coaches? You guessed it: HR.

If you do a stellar job training your reviewers on how to structure, view and deliver the performance review, you won't need to do much else. Coaching your managers on performance appraisals is one of those one-time investments in your people that keeps paying off. If you use a rating system, it's also a good idea to make sure the ratings are calibrated so that a rating of 5 for one manager has the same guidelines, behaviors and expectations as the other.

Many HR leaders like to review appraisals before they're delivered to the employee. Whether or not you do that is completely up to you and your own hard-earned hunch about your teams and people. But if you've done a great job coaching your managers on delivering feedback, this may be another part of the process you can comfortably take yourself out of.

Mediate When Necessary

In a perfect world, managers would know how to diplomatically and effectively deliver feedback, and employees would know not to take any part of the process personally.

But for better or worse, we live in a world where stuff happens. Performance appraisals can sometimes have a way of bringing issues to the surface and in the event of a strained or tense employee-manager relationship, HR will need to step in and be that advocate for fairness once again. In general, it's never a bad idea to check in with managers and employees after a performance review to see if they have any suggestions or concerns.

Document and Follow Up

Performance reviews are so much more than a compliance activity, but they definitely check that box as well. It's a natural part of the HR process to record and store evaluation records in order to remain compliant, but this information can also be used to assess past trends and drive future efficiencies in the process.

This may also include collecting and following up on employee feedback as well. A great way for HR to be involved in the process is to once again take on the role of the fair and objective mediator when looking at the evolution of your performance process over time. Where is there room for improvement? What do managers and employees need to know so that they can do it better themselves?

Adopt the role of a true performance review process strategist and you'll not only have happier people, but fewer tasks to bear.