Performance Review Time? Try this Approach Instead (Ep 48)

Today I sit down with myself and ponder how performance review meetings can be an empowering exercise for both employer and employee.  We’ve reached the end of another financial year and, whether you dread them or delight in them, performance reviews are an essential part of managing people.   Many of the negative feelings that people harbor around getting together with staff to talk about their performance are part of an old, potentially outdated process. How many times have you sat through a yearly performance review meeting, filled out an overly-long checklist and left the meeting only to forget what was said until the next year?  That’s how it used to go at my law firm before we changed things up a few years ago. We stripped the process down to a couple of key points that I break down in this episode.   Using these meetings as an opportunity for a constructive, goal-setting exercise can be both incredibly empowering for employees and rewarding for employers.   So in today’s episode I’ll walk you how we’re now ‘Doing Performance Reviews Differently’.  Some of the topics I cover:  * Why do we even need performance reviews? * How can we, as employers, make performance reviews more meaningful? * When should we do them and how formal should they be?  About your host – Lucy Dickens  Lucy is a lawyer and business coach with over a decade of experience in law firm transformation.  She helps sole practitioners and leaders of boutique law firms make their business more efficient and effective so they don’t feel so overwhelmed holding it all together.   Her practical experience extends across all areas of legal practice management, but she has a particular knack for designing streamlined processes that drive efficiencies and deliver value.   She is also a Senior Associate at Birman & Ride, a leading NewLaw firm in Perth, Western Australia, where she practices what she preaches. Lucy leads the development of the firm’s consumer legal services, bringing together people, technology and processes to design and deliver innovative legal services.  Like this show?  * Please leave me a review here – even one sentence helps! * Never miss an episode – subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify    * If you’re doing law differently and want to share your insights on the podcast, get in touch here.  * Download my latest e-book, 80 ways to modernise your law firm, full of short, sharp and practical tips to help you firm your foundations, sort your strategy and optimise your operations  * Connect with me on