0 Riddle Me This and Win a Free Annual Subscription! Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 11:19 AM

Riddle me this, riddle me that and you can win an annual subscription! ReviewSNAP will be giving away one free first year subscription in our quarterly Twitter contest. The contest will start on Monday, August 1oth at Noon CST.

We will tweet a short riddle and post it on our blog and give our followers the entire week to answer the question. The answer form link will be on the ReviewSNAP blog in the lower right hand corner of the page. Also, we will send out the link via various social media sites.

The contest will close on Friday, August 14th at 5 PM CST.

Format and Rules:

At the end of the week, we will randomly pick 20 people who answered the riddle correctly. From that group of 20, we will select the winner. We'll post the selection process here on our blog, so everyone can follow along! You will only be able to submit one answer so choose your answer wisely.

Good Luck!

0 ReviewSNAP President Featured in Talent Management Technology Article Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 12:21 PM

Take a look at the Talent Management Technology article featuring ReviewSNAP President, Dave Arringdale.

0 Communicate Often To Your Employees Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 12:54 PM

In the absence of clear and frequent communication, employees can dream up all sorts of distorted ideas about what is going on within the organization. Managers are responsible for conveying to employees many things. Employees must know which direction the company and their immediate work units are headed. Providing clear feedback to them helps them stay focused and helps to avert a rampant rumor mill. Managers should make it a point to take time on a regular and frequent basis to communicate with employees.

0 Surprise! You're Fired! Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 11:10 AM

Have you ever been fired, demoted or reprimanded and had no clue that it was coming? When the boss gives you the bad news you just want to laugh and ask if you're being Punk'd, but unfortunately you know that is not the case. It probably feels like someone just dropped an anvil on your chest and you wonder what you did to deserve this. And, for that matter, you can't think of a single instance of someone talking to you about performance related issues. While we know this isn't the case, it appears that some companies out there enjoy the shock value of dropping the bad news on people by surprise.

Reality is that people are going to be fired, demoted or reprimanded. That is inevitable. But organizations can avoid the surprise by having their managers give their employees feedback about their performance on a consistent basis rather than only once a year during their performance reviews. If colleagues and managers journal feedback throughout the year and this feedback is communicated to employees regularly, then there will be few or no surprises when it comes time for an employees review or when a formal reprimanded is issued.

If you are looking for a performance management system that offers a journal/feedback tool to help keep track of an employee's performance throughout the entire year, you will find it in ReviewSNAP. This process is proven and virtually guarantees no surprises along with accurate performance reviews.

0 Extension to a Good Post on Performance Management Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 10:21 AM

This morning I read a good post on Renegade HR called "Create a Performance Management Culture The Ghandi Way" and I want to extend my thoughts on this approach. All too often companies do their reviews once a year and forget about the employee's development until next year's reviews come around. Then when it comes time for next year's reviews the managers rate the employees similar or identical to the previous review and their development plan looks no different than the previous year's.

To avoid this situation, managers need to journal and discuss with the employee where they stand on their performance and how they might improve their skills. This is beneficial to the company in a couple of ways. First, this will help maximize an employee's production by ensuring that they will work to improve their skill set. Second, this ensures the most accurate reviews and helps avoid unnecessary or overly generous compensation increases.

It's okay to do official reviews only once a year, but it's important that communication is strong between the manager and employee along the way. Only positives comes out of strong, accurate, and ongoing communication, so why avoid it?

1 What'ya Think About Our Blog? Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 7:17 PM

Hey Everyone, as you can see ReviewSNAP completely revamped the look of our blog. We would appreciate your feedback on the look and feel of the blog.

0 Performance Incentives Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 2:46 PM

Employees that have performance incentives as part of their compensation package need to earn their bonuses or other form of incentive compensation. In some organizations, incentive compensation is too loosely tied to performance and payments are made regardless of performance. This sends a very bad message in terms of accountability. When performance does not meet the minimum requirements for payout under an incentive compensation arrangement, there should be no payout. Incentive compensation should be designed to incent the employee to participate in enhancing bottom line performance of the company in various ways.

0 Weighted Competency Reviews and Assignable Review Periods Now Launched Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 8:26 AM

ReviewSNAP recently launched the ability to create performance reviews using weighted competency groups. You will be able to assign a percentage to each competency group, which will be calculated into the overall rating of any given employee. Using weighted competencies is optional so you have the choice between weighted and unweighted ratings.

Also, we have added the ability to assign specific employees to specific review periods. For example, if your company has two review periods during the year where half of the employees receive their reviews in the first review period and the other half receive them in the second review period, you will now be able to assign the employees individually to the review period in which they will be reviewed. This is in addition to the multiple review period options already available within the system.

If you are in search for a performance review system to meet your needs, request a live demo with ReviewSNAP and we'll be happy to walk you through the system and answer your questions. And remember, we will never, ever pressure you to subscribe.

0 Employees Are Your Best Consultants Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 10:03 AM

The best consultants for your business are your employees. They can help you with a wide variety of issues because they deal with them every day. Many times employees have great ideas, but are reluctant to come forward out of fear or simply because they feel their ideas won't be taken seriously. Develop a system that requires and allows all employees to be active "internal consultants". Suggestion boxes and anonymous systems tend to not work because employees don't feel compelled to submit ideas. Or they have in the past and their ideas have been ignored or someone else took credit for them. Setting up profit teams that submit and refine suggestions works in some organizations. Requiring work units to submit suggestions for their own areas on a defined, regular interval has worked well in others. In both cases, making suggestions and developing ways to enhance profits become a part of every employee's job.

Create a reward system that pays all employees for enhanced profitability. Make the rewards significant enough to incent the employees. Profit sharing is most common, but you can also pay on cost savings, productivity gains or any other unit of measure that makes sense for your company.

0 Obama To Give Performance Reviews To All Employees Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 9:41 AM

This is a funny video. Maybe we'll have to give the Pres a call and hook him up with ReviewSNAP.


Obama To Hold Job Performance Review With Every American Worker

0 Reduce Employee Turnover Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 7:35 AM

The cost of excessive employee turnover is extremely high. Below are some rough estimates that we use in assessing the cost of turning over one employee:

Annual Salary or Wages Turnover Cost
$20,000/$10/hour $7,000
$30,000/$15/hour $10,500
$40,000/$20/hour $14,000
$50,000/$25/hour $17,000
$60,000/$30/hour $20,000

Suppose a business has 50 employees. And assume that employee turnover is running in the 20% range annually. This means that one of every five employees is turning over annually for a total of ten employees. And let's use $30,000 as the average annual salary/wage. In this example, the company will incur $105,000 of costs associated with employee turnover.
What happens if the turnover is reduced from 20% to 10% annually? In this example, there is a $52,500 savings that will drop straight through to the bottom line. This is a significant amount of money that can be used in productive ways to grow and enhance the business.

Turnover costs include, but are not limited to; hiring expenses, training expenses, productivity losses and internal resources applied to dealing with the termination and hiring process. There are also soft costs associated with excessive employee turnover. Soft costs have more to do with the impact of a revolving door on other employees. Other employees often have to pick up the additional work load until a new employee is hired and trained. This can lead to morale problems.

Keep in mind that we are talking about excessive turnover. There can be times when some turnover is positive. Cleansing the organization of problem employees is usually a positive and can have a significant positive impact on morale and productivity.

0 Why Automate Performance Management Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 8:51 AM

The majority of companies are still using a paper driven process or a proprietary performance management system, which is not automated. Read this free white paper to see why you should switch to an automated performance management system.

0 ReviewSNAP to Add Weighted Competencies Option Posted by ReviewSNAP | at 7:26 AM

This is just a quick update to let you know that ReviewSNAP will be adding the ability use weighted competencies within your performance appraisal process. When we initially built the system we wanted to stay away from weighted competencies, but this is another example of ReviewSNAP keeping our ear to the ground and our mind open to make sure and meet the needs of our customers.

When this is launched you will have the option of using weighted or non-weighted competencies. This way you are sure to meet the needs of your current review process. The tentative launch date is July 15th. If there are any changes in the status or launch date we will keep you updated through the ReviewSNAP Blog.