A very quick summary of how we approach performance reviews at Bellroy
I originally posted this on Linkedin in April 2018, mostly to encourage people to think about applying for a job at Bellroy. That would still be a great thing to do if any of our jobs appeal (link at the bottom of the post). Also, you might find this useful if you’re trying to design your own performance review process. I can confirm that as of February 2021, we still using the same approach.
This month at Bellroy we're running performance reviews with our team members. We split the review into two main sections:
1. Behaviours, attitudes and mindset,
2. Skills and work outcomes
Generally, I find new employees have a stronger focus on skills and work outcomes in their reviews, really wanting to look at what work they did or didn't get done and what their skill set looks like. But I think a lot of the interesting development work and opportunities for growth come from the section in the review about behaviours, attitudes and mindset.
We use a strengths-based approach to reviewing behaviours, attitudes and mindset. So in a review, we're generally talking about the strengths that we're seeing our team show through their work. And then the opportunities that are available for them in a work context if they leaned into (or developed) some new or different strengths.
Sometimes it's tricky to find the right words to describe a strength and so I find the VIA character strengths very useful as a way of trying to work out the strengths I'm seeing displayed and the ones I'd like to see a little more of. I pretty much have a link to the strengths open as a browser tab for the whole month of April.
It's worth having a look if you haven't dived into character strengths in a more structured form before. (Also, if this sounds like the kind of performance review process you'd like to be a part of, then maybe check out our jobs page).