Warning: I stopped using yearly reviews and switched to quick daily check-ins with my team

For 4 years I did the whole formal once a year review thing at the hardware store. It was a pain to write up and everyone hated it. About 6 months ago I started just pulling each employee aside for 5 minutes every morning to ask what they're working on and if they need anything. Totally changed how people talk to me. Now I catch small problems before they blow up like last month when a guy needed a different tool for a plumbing job. Has anyone else tried ditching the big formal review for something simpler?

2 comments

2 Comments

simontorres4d ago

Christopher's story reminds me how trust fixes most workplace problems before they start.

christopher_west14d ago

My old boss did something similar but he would do it while walking around the store floor with a cup of coffee. People actually started to look forward to those little chats because they knew he wasn't going to lecture them about some performance metric from six months ago. The funny thing was that it totally backfired on him in one way though. Everyone got so comfortable telling him about their problems that he ended up with a wait list of people wanting to talk to him before their shift started. He had to set a timer on his phone to keep each check in under five minutes or he would never get any other work done. But the complaints went way down and the repair crew started finishing jobs faster because they didn't have to wait for approvals anymore.