Before You Skip Performance Reviews Again, Read This

It is that time of year again - and we’re not talking about the fun, festive, and cheery stretch of holiday lights and copious amounts of eggnog.

For small audiology practices, this time of year usually comes with something far less glamorous: packed schedules, staffing gaps, last‑minute patients trying to use their benefits, staff rushing to burn through use-it-or-lose-it PTO, and the thousand little fires that come with running a hearing health clinic.

So, when it comes to the annual end-of-year performance reviews, many owners quietly skip them.

Not because they don’t care about their people - they absolutely do. But, because the traditional review process feels heavy, awkward, and time‑consuming. And unlike hospitals or large medical groups, most audiology practices don’t have an HR team to guide the process or help them navigate tricky conversations.

However, from experience advising and guiding clinics on hearing health talent management, skipping performance reviews doesn’t save time. In fact, it costs you more of it in the long run. The turnover conversations, the performance issues that fester, the good people who leave because they don’t feel seen? Those take far more energy than a structured 30-minute conversation ever would.

And the data backs it up: practices that maintain even a simple, consistent performance review rhythm see stronger patient outcomes, better staff engagement, and significantly lower turnover.

Why audiology practices avoid year-end reviews

After countless conversations with clinic owners, we started noticing the same concerns coming up again and again: most hearing health practices skip reviews for four predictable reasons.

1. Time pressure: This one’s straightforward. Audiologists and hearing health professionals are busier than ever - the whole medical industry in the US is - with an MGMA workforce report finding that 53% of U.S. medical practices are operating short-staffed. So, when you’re choosing between seeing a patient and writing a performance review, the patient wins every time. we get it.

2. Fear of saying the wrong thing: Without HR support, owners worry about legal missteps - especially around documentation, expectations, or conversations about underperformance. The anxiety is real, so the conversation gets avoided entirely.

3. No system or structure: In small clinics, performance reviews often depend on memory, vague impressions, or a generic template found on Google. So rather than do it poorly, many practices don’t do it at all.

4. Traditional reviews feel outdated: And honestly? They kind of are. Traditional annual reviews were built for a different era - one where work moved slower, roles were static, and feedback once a year felt “good enough.” But clinics today operate in constant motion. So it makes sense that many clinicians find old‑school reviews uncomfortable, disconnected from the work they actually do, and more stressful than supportive.

Why year-end performance reviews still matter - especially in hearing health

But avoiding annual performance reviews doesn’t eliminate performance problems. It just pushes them into January - and the months after that. Which is why, here at Staffing Proxy, we firmly believe that they’re one of the most effective tools hearing health practices have to keep staff aligned, motivated, and growing.

▪ Continuous feedback boosts job satisfaction: Employees who receive regular feedback report high job satisfaction - and in a labor shortage, that matters more than ever. When clinics are stretched thin and every clinician counts, these conversations help eliminate surprises for both the employer and the employee. They surface issues early, reduce the risk of someone quietly disengaging, and prevent the very scenario no clinic can afford: an empty chair.

▪ Structured reviews improve patient outcomes: A 2024 benchmark study of 800 U.S. hearing clinics found that practices that monitor performance metrics - things like treatment acceptance, follow-up consistency, patient experience scores - see higher fitting success and lower return rates.

▪ Effective performance management fuels growth: Healthcare organizations with structured review systems achieved 25% higher headcount growth over four years. In other words, better people frameworks lead to better business.

At the end of the day, when done right, year-end reviews give people something most hearing health professionals rarely get: clarity about where they stand and what good looks like. And clarity is the one thing that consistently improves both clinical practice and patient care.

What a performance review should look like

Okay, here’s the good part: you don’t need a corporate HR department. You don’t need a 14-page performance review report, and you definitely don’t need phrases like “meets expectations” or “areas for improvement.”

What you need is a structured, honest 20–30-minute conversation built around three things:

1. What happened this year

Start with what actually occurred, not what you remember from last week.

Pull specific examples: clinical outcomes (like fitting success rates or patient satisfaction scores), professionalism (how they handled a difficult situation), documentation quality, teamwork moments, patient care wins.

The goal is to make the feedback feel grounded in reality rather than opinion. So when an employee hears “You maintained a 94% follow-up completion rate,” that lands differently than “You’re pretty good at follow-ups.”

2. Where the employee stands today

This is where most small practices find it challenging.

Without structure, performance reviews are vulnerable to recency bias, availability bias, and personal feelings unrelated to performance.

A consistent rubric eliminates this. It gives you a clear, defensible way to evaluate everyone against the same standards - whether it’s clinical competency, communication skills, or attention to detail.

3. What we’re working toward next year

Create 2–3 clear, achievable development goals. These could range from improving documentation accuracy to strengthening consulting skills to mastering a new skill.

• Improving documentation accuracy
• Increasing treatment acceptance rates
• Strengthening counseling skills
• Reducing follow-up gaps
• Mastering a new clinical skill

These goals should stretch the employee without overwhelming them and connect directly to your practices and overarching business goals.

Small practices deserve the same tools big organizations have

The trouble is, most small practices don’t have a structure in place. And - when we introduce our HR platform to our audiology clients, the response is almost always the same:

“Wait, we can have the same tools as big organizations at a fraction of the cost?”

Yes. Yes, you can.

Here’s what our clients tell us makes the difference:

A performance review builder that writes the review for you. Choose the role, drag a rating slider, and the HR platform generates professional, appropriate language. No more struggling to find the right words for thoughtful, constructive feedback.
Clinical-relevant, attorney-reviewed templates. The legal anxiety that stops so many reviews from happening? Gone. You’re working with structured, compliant formats designed for healthcare.
Goal-setting is tied to real business outcomes. Track patient satisfaction, fitting success rates, follow-up completion - the metrics that actually matter in your practice - using tools that make measurement straightforward.
Salary benchmarking with real data. BLS-sourced benchmarks specific to audiology roles, so you know you’re compensating fairly and staying competitive.
Built-in compliance training. HIPAA modules, safety courses, state-mandated training - all handled within the platform, keeping your clinic audit-ready.
An HR hotline staffed by real people. When nuance matters, and you need to talk through a situation before acting, you’ve got experienced HR professionals a phone call away.

In short: you get the power of a full HR department - without the cost of one.

The bottom line

When you strip away the corporate jargon and outdated templates associated with performance reviews, what you’re left with is one of the most powerful tools a practice owner has: a structured conversation that aligns your team around what excellent patient care actually looks like.

That clarity protects your practice legally. It keeps good people engaged and growing. It directly improves the quality of care your patients receive. And when you have the right infrastructure in place, these conversations take 30 minutes, not three hours of agonizing over a Google Doc.

And here’s the thing - once you have an HR system that makes the whole process manageable, you stop thinking of them as an annual obligation. In fact, the best practices we work with do either quarterly check-ins or, at a minimum, mid-year reviews. Performance management has become part of how they operate, not something they dread once a year.

If you need guidance on structuring your performance reviews or want to see what our HR platform can do for your practice, let’s talk. Reach out, and we’ll figure out what makes sense for your team.