APP Year-End Review Meeting
A key element in the annual performance leadership process is the year-end review meeting. Leaders can be proactive to help ease some of the stress that comes with annual performance reviews and contribute to an experience that is beneficial and meaningful to all involved.
Performance leadership focuses on the ongoing growth and development of people to build their leadership capabilities, and to ensure effectiveness in achieving results that matter most to the patients, families and communities served. With that in mind, a year-end conversation can be valuable, provided it’s the culminating effort of a year-long focus.
There are several leadership behaviours and practices that contribute to an effective year-end review meeting
Leadership behaviours and practices
- An effective goal setting process at the beginning of the year. For more information on how to do this well see “How to Fill out the APP & Goal Setting” page.
- Creating a sense of psychological safety. Consider the following questions as you support and empower employees in the pursuit of meaningful goals:
- How are you contributing to conditions in the workplace where team members feel like they belong and are safe to learn, contribute and challenge?
- Is it safe for employees to try new things?
- When they do try new things and they don't work as well as planned, is it safe for employees to express and discuss that 'failure'?
- Do you help them reflect on what they have learned in addition to what could be done better/different going forward?
- How are you helping direct reports keep their sense of status, autonomy and relatedness intact?
- More information about doing this well can be found on the “Leading Continuous Feedback Conversations” page.
- Demonstrating vulnerability and humility by asking for feedback ourselves.
- When we ask others for feedback about our own performance, not only do we have opportunity for learning and growth, we create an atmosphere where others start asking for feedback themselves.
- Check out our Asking for and Receiving Feedback course for more information.
- Ongoing and regular feedback conversations throughout the year.
- Review the course on Leading Continuous Feedback Conversations for helpful learning on this subject.
- When feedback conversations are regular and effective, the year-end conversation is enhanced.
When all of these components are in place, the year-end conversation will be much more meaningful and effective for all parties.
Roles and responsibilities
Effective year-end review meetings are a shared responsibility between employees and supervisors. Supervisors can take the lead on scheduling year-end review meetings throughout March and April to balance this with day-to-day responsibilities. The deadline to complete all year-end review meetings is April 30.
Employees and supervisors are responsible for properly preparing for the year-end conversation by reviewing the completed APP and considering performance-focused feedback over the course of the year.
Employee Responsibilities
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Prep for the year-end review meeting by reviewing APP goals and year-end comments.
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Complete 'Employee Comments' in the Year-End Review section of the online APP and click "Submit" to ensure your APP completion status proceeds to "Ready for Review".
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Notify your supervisor that your APP is ready for review.
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Be prepared to speak to all identified APP goals and results achieved, including whether goals are complete or incomplete, and how success is measured.
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Reminder: this can also be the time to discuss the following year's APP goals, so come prepared to discuss next years’ goals if necessary.
Supervisor Responsibilities
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Do not provide a recommended performance rating at this time. This information will be shared at a later date, and you will be notified when it’s appropriate to share final ratings with employees.
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Create a safe space where team members can share openly and candidly about their successes, lessons learned, and what support they might need from you and/or others as they look ahead to the next year.
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Listen actively, ask curious questions, recognize and celebrate successes and lessons learned.
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Remember to acknowledge and value the person, not just the work they’ve done.
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Be specific when giving feedback. Focus on leadership behaviours, skills and/or character traits that you particularly value and appreciate about the individual.
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At times, feedback conversations may be more difficult. While these conversations are rarely easy, you may find this resource on Difficult Conversations helpful.
Four Guiding Questions for Supervisors
Similar to the continuous feedback discussions throughout the year, there are four simple questions that can guide an effective year-end conversation. Supervisors should feel free to add/change questions as you see fit, but these four questions provide a solid foundation to ensure the year-end conversation is productive and meaningful.
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What results have you achieved?
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What didn’t go as well as planned?
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What are you learning?
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What support do you need?
Question 1: What results have you achieved?
Similar to the continuous feedback question, “What is going well?” the goal of this question is to provide employees with an opportunity to reflect on key results achieved as it relates to the goals identified in the APP. A follow on question could be, “What are you most proud of from the past year?”
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Once you ask this first question, pause and listen.
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Validate and acknowledge where you can.
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Affirm what you agree with and add other achievements that you’ve observed over the year.
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Ask questions that encourage deeper reflection about what was achieved.
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Be specific when providing feedback. Instead of, “Good job," try, “I really appreciate how you brought people from other departments together to contribute to this strategy.”
Question 2: What didn’t go as well as planned?
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The goal here is to provide a safe space for individuals to share where goals weren’t achieved and/or where plans didn’t go as well as expected, and to be able to reflect on those experiences with a growth mindset.
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Follow the same process as in question 1- listen, validate, and ask questions that encourage deeper reflection.
Question 3: What are you learning?
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The goal of question 2 is to set up a discussion around lessons learned.
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A key part of continuous feedback is to capitalize on opportunities to learn when things don’t go as planned.
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Supervisors can help team members develop a reflective practice that promotes a continuous learning and improvement mindset.
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Allow team members to share their own reflections on lessons learned.
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Another question to pair with the learning question is, “What might you do differently next time?” This will help move learning to action.
Question 4: What support do you need?
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The support identified might be from you as supervisor, from peers, from others in the organization or perhaps even from outside the organization.
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This question affirms that we’re better together, that support is available and that asking for help/support is a sign of strength.
Learning Events
A workshop is being offered in March and April each year to help supervisors understand this model, ask questions for clarification and spend time practicing this with others.
For more information, or to register please see the Learning Events page.
Related Documents
Additional Resources
- At times, feedback conversations may be more difficult due to performance issues. While these conversations are rarely easy, you may find these resources on Difficult Conversations helpful.
- The performance review is subject to manager bias as it relies heavily on human judgment. Bias is common; it exists in many manager-employee interactions. While the performance review may be daunting - even for an experienced manager, there are resources available to support you in avoiding error and bias.
If you have any questions, email us at SHAOrgDevelopment@saskhealthauthority.ca.