The 90-Day Reverse Review
The 90-Day Reverse Review
Like a lot of companies, Return Path does a 90-day review on all new employees to make sure they’re performing well, on track, and a good fit. Sometimes those reviews are one-way from the manager, sometimes they are 360s.
But we have also done something for years now called the 90-Day Reverse Review, which is equally valuable. Around the same 90-day mark, and unrelated to the regular review process, every new employee gets 30 minutes with a member of the Executive Committee (my direct reports, or me if the person is reporting to someone on my team) where the employee has a chance to give US feedback on how WE are doing.
These meetings are meant to be pretty informal, though the exec running the meeting takes notes and circulates them afterwards. We have a series of questions we typically ask, and we send them out ahead of time so the employee can prepare. They are things like:
-Was this a good career move? Are you happy you’re here?
-How was your onboarding experience?
-How do you explain your job to people outside the company?
-What is the company’s mission, and how does your role contribute to it?
-How do you like your manager? Your team?
-Do you feel connected to the company? How is the company’s information flow?
-What has been your proudest moment/accomplishment so far?
-What do you like best about the company?
-If you could wave a wand and change something here, what would it be?
We do these for a few reasons:
-At the 90-day mark, new employees know enough about the company to give good input, and they are still fresh enough to see the company through the lens of other places they’ve worked
-These are a great opportunity for executives to have a “Moment of Truth” with new employees
-They give employees a chance to productively reflect on their time so far and potentially learn something or make some course correction coming out of it
-We always learn things, large or small, that are helpful for us as a management team, whether something needs to be modified with our Onboarding program, or whether we have a problem with a manager or a team or a process, or whether there’s something great we can steal from an employee’s past experiences
This is a great part of our Operating System at Return Path!