We often think about performance reviews as a business function that doesn’t get the attention it deserves until a business reaches hundreds of employees, but small businesses can greatly benefit from adopting a performance review program as soon as they can.
In this article, we’ll detail some of the reasons small business don’t implement a program and why they should reconsider.
Performance Review Software Is Expensive
If you’re reading this article, you may think of performance review software as only available from human resource packages designed for large companies in developed economies. If you’re in the United States, you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that historically, there hasn’t been an option for companies that aren’t large enough for a huge package from UKG, Workday, ADP or Paychex.
But we built Performance Bliss for companies of all sizes globally. The price is simple as is the ROI.
Performance Bliss costs $5US/employee/month or $60/employee/year. For each employee, if they become $60 more product for the whole year, that’s an argument that any CFO can understand.
But there is something that really smart CEO’s understand intuitively: culture carries the day and that a great segue…
Small Business Don’t Emphasize Culture Enough
When I built my first business in Costa Rica at age 26, I thought everyone was like me: entrepreneurially-minded, problem solving, self-actualizing, etc. and they aren’t. Many founders don’t start out knowing how to work with people who aren’t wired like founders.
Thankfully, culture is a shared experience that is enhanced (or tarnished) by lots of personalities working together (or trying to).
There’s an adage about managing goals for software engineering teams that every time the team triples in headcount, the management systems have to be reset. While there’s some truth in that, having an established culture smooths out that process and lowers the burden on managers.
Small Businesses Think Performance Review Software Is Only for Managers
In a small company, there just aren’t that many managers. There might not even be a layer of “middle management” yet, so if feedback is only flowing in one direction, maybe performance reviews can just be handled manually or with spreadsheets.
Well here’s a little secret about managing millennials and Gen-Z, 360 feedback or feedback from their peers is really effective and lowers the load on managers.
In small business, “the boss” wears a lot of hats, maybe even too many at times. And being an authority all the time can be taxing and in some cases, suppress the flow of valuable feedback.
When a business adopts performance review software that offers employee feedback tools with prompts throughout the year (versus relying so heavily on end of year review data), that is more thinking and writing for everyone but it also allows for each individual to hear from different voices.
Some people may be more motivated by letting the boss down, but in a team environment, receiving reviews that say that a particular employee is letting the team down can be really powerful.
How to Adopt Performance Review Software as a Small Business
If you’re reading this, hopefully you’re already considering taking Performance Bliss for a test drive.
Our design approach has been to simplify and de-risk the whole process. From an employee perspective, if you can use a Instagram or similar social media, you’ll find the sharing and receiving of feedback very similar.
For managers and companies looking to adopt, the data modeling is intentionally simple and there is no implementation fee (because the system designed for self-guided onboarding).
So what do you have to lose? If you haven’t already, sign up for Performance Bliss and find out what all the excitement is about!
