For many companies, a common performance review pain-point is keeping your managers engaged in the process. Engaged managers complete on-time, well thought-out and constructive reviews for their employees which in turn helps keep employees connected and on a path of success within your company. When this engagement is lacking, employees often feel as if their managers are indifferent about their role within the team. When employees aren’t receiving regular feedback, they often become stagnant which causes the growth of your company to suffer.  If engagement is vital to company and employe ..read more

Qualitative employee performance reviews are often viewed as an outdated practice. It used to be that an employee would be evaluated on a series of generic competencies that weren’t directly related to their job. Unsurprisingly, they received vague feedback that didn’t quite help them learn how to improve their performance. With the emergence of modern performance management software, organizations can now conduct quantitative performance reviews. Objective goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are set for each employee and their progress is tracked throughout the review period. When it ..read more

There is a common saying in business, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Performance reviews are meant to help employees improve, but all too often, an employee leaves their meeting with their manager unsure of exactly how they can get better at their job. This happens because a quarterly or annual evaluation tends to be qualitative rather than quantitative.  Here is an example many professionals can relate to: They expect their performance review to focus on the work they do every day but are instead evaluated on a series of generic competencies unrelated to their role. Per ..read more

Modern performance management goes beyond the occasional performance review. Today’s organizations ensure managers and direct reports meet regularly to discuss priorities, challenges, and how the employee can improve their approach to work. Check-in meetings are usually conducted weekly but can occur every two weeks or monthly, depending on the role. A check-in shouldn’t just be a quick recap of what the employee is working on. That isn’t a productive conversation since the manager assigned the employee’s tasks and is working closely with them every day.  A check-in should instead focus o ..read more

Creating a performance review process is straightforward in most organizations. Managers are responsible for completing evaluations and meeting with direct reports to share results. There isn’t any friction as long as performance management best practices are followed. After all, employees expect feedback from their manager. At least, that is how it works in a traditional top-down organizational structure. There are multiple management levels so most employees report to someone one level higher in the hierarchy.  But what is the best way to conduct employee performance reviews in a flat o ..read more

For a long time, organizations took a simplistic approach to evaluating employee performance. Once a year, managers filled out the same appraisal form for each direct report and the results were used to determine raises, promotions, and other workforce management decisions. Employees unsurprisingly grew to resent this process. The annual review had major ramifications but its accuracy left a lot to be desired. An employee’s professional outlook was impacted by the ratings they received on a handful of generic competencies. As experience with annual performance reviews grew, its other disadvant ..read more

Today, we’re excited to announce that Trakstar will have a new and improved look. Our customers will enjoy all the great performance management features they know and love, organized in a modern, simple, and clean interface and navigation.  Here is a preview of the improvements you can expect to see the next time you log in to Trakstar. A simplified navigation Trakstar administrators and managers will be greeted with a simplified global navigation. You’ll notice menus take up less space on your screen and have a cleaner design so it’s easy to locate the feature you’re looking for.  A ..read more

Using stack ranking, every employees’ performance review score is ordered and grouped. The group with the highest scores are deemed top performers. These are the employees who consistently exceed expectations and deliver better results than their peers. The largest portion of employees fall into the middle group and are considered adequate at their jobs—neither overly succeeding nor failing. And the group with the lowest scores are identified as under performers, who prevent the organization from operating at full capacity.  Stack ranking provides a big picture overview of performance across y ..read more

At the heart of every organization’s employee review process is the rating scale. It’s the medium in which managers and other raters express how well an employee performs at their job, conducts themselves in the workplace, and embodies the organization’s values. It also provides a system for quantifying evaluations and generating data for succession and compensation planning. Most HR professionals put a lot of thought into the competencies included on employee appraisal forms but too many overlook the rating scales that accompany them. The wrong scale can cause raters to misunderstand their sc ..read more

Today, we’re excited to announce a new feature that will help our customers get even more out of our software—the launch of our Application Programming Interface (API). Using our API, Trakstar can communicate and share details with your other employee management and HR software. Automating data entry frees you to use Trakstar to focus on what matters most—providing performance appraisals that help your employees reach their full potential.  Ready to connect to your favorite HR tools? Contact us to learn how to get started. How our API works Your organization has multiple systems that hold empl ..read more