Launching Your Review or Check-In Cycle

Overview 

Welcome to Reflektive's HR Guide to Designing and Launching an Effective Reviews & Check-Ins Program! We will be talking about strategies, best practices, and tips that you can use to successfully implement Reflektive's reviews platform to your organization. Please review all the following sections carefully. Each of the chapters are broken down into separate articles, which are linked in the table of contents below.

If you would prefer to view this guide in its entirety and as a single .pdf, please download it here.

1. 1. Introduction
2. 2. Designing Your Review Program
3. 3. Launching Your Review or Check-In (you are here)
4. 4. Conclusion

Launching a review or check-in requires the coordination of many different moving parts. The following launch plan helps you create a streamlined process for your key stakeholders.

Step 1. Get executive buy-in
Ensure the entire leadership team is aligned on your objective and framework.

Step 2. Share your plan with managers
Schedule a manager training session to review the timeline and process prior to communicating with the broader organization. Ensure that managers are equipped to answer their team’s questions. 

If you are unable to hold a manager training session, provide managers with information on a wiki or intranet site. We recommend coaching office hours so managers can stop by with questions or get assistance on preparing for their conversations. 

Step 3. Send a company-wide communication
In your launch email, include information on the “why”, “what”, and “when” of your cycle (recommended messaging and content is in the Appendix!) Encourage everyone to block time in their calendars for completing reviews so they can finish them before the deadline (HR teams can also send calendar holds for all individual contributors!) Finally, we recommend office hours for individual contributors so they can ask questions on the upcoming cycle.

Step 4. Launch your review, and use nudges if needed
Nudges remind employees to complete their reviews or check-ins. In fact, most Reflektive customers use three nudges per cycle. Additionally, you can get higher completion rates by partnering with managers. For example, managers can share with their team that they’ve completed their review, and lead by example. More communication best practices are available here.

Step 5. Track progress! 
Make sure you are leveraging a people analytics platform, such as Reflektive’s People Intelligence solution, to keep track of your KPIs. 

Learn more about People Intelligence

Step 6. Ensure fairness by calibrating
Gather team leaders for calibration sessions. Adjust performance ratings to account for leaders who may be easy or hard graders. 

Step 7. Gather employee sentiment on the review or check-in
Poll employees, or create a focus group, to gather feedback on the cycle. Ensure that this feedback is documented and available for your HR team.

Step 8. Hold a retrospective meeting

Schedule time with your HR group to review what went well, and what did not go well. Use this information to iterate for future cycles.