The Annual Review

The annual review is a practice that is been around for as long as I can recall with most companies trying to achieve it. Most use this as a way to assure the employee has a strong understanding of their performance throughout the year. Some also use it as the time employees are evaluated for merit-based increases.

Go through a series of questions and statements about what the goals will be for the employees next year of achievement. They review past performance generally with a rating between the ranges of 1 to 10. Today let’s look at different approaches to the annual review and dealership environment.

Your Personal Review
Most times management isn’t reviewed with just the employees being challenged. It would be interesting if everybody allowed the employees to express management satisfaction surveys that rated their supervision on the same scale their rated. If this was performed in a manner that allowed individuals to be honest and open without any chance of reprisal a lot of good may come out of this review. If you are in a position of leadership I challenge you to take a fresh approach to evaluate your performance.

Instead of an annual review, I think it should be done daily with this challenging question “what can I do to improve myself today?” Employees are often surprised in their annual review as they believe they were doing wonderfully and management rated them poorly. If reviews are a surprise to your employees, your management skills should be considered lacking. See there should never be a question where your staff can raise their performance. There should be constant gratitude for things being performed well and areas of opportunity for growth throughout the year.

The Politics
Many dealerships allow staff politics to disrupt dealership operations. They allow personal relationships with the dealer and family members that feel they can do anything about consequence because of their position. Some have family members in the same departments that allow favoritism to be shown to them.

Whenever the dealership allows politics you must understand how destructive that is to the entire staff. If your dealership does have situations like this the expectation must absolutely be the same for all employees performance.

The Main Thing
The primary focus must always remain to maximize the customer experience in your dealership on a consistent basis. It should never be a surprise to anybody how they are performing and interactions with management providing coaching should be consistent and on a daily basis. The development of your staff should never be an annual experience!

Establish the culture of customer care understanding that your staff and their satisfaction are critical for this to be achieved.

Sincerely,

Rob Gehring, President
Fixed Performance Inc. (Fixed Operations Consulting)
Margin Plus (Warranty Reimbursement Program)
Cell 419-282-1351
rgehring@fixedperformance.com
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