How HR Training and Development Enhance Annual Performance Reviews for SMBs

Year-end performance reviews give small and mid-sized business leaders a valuable opportunity to recognize employee growth, provide support where needed, and align employee goals with business objectives. But at many companies, reviews can feel rushed, subjective, or disconnected from day-to-day performance, especially if employees haven’t received clear expectations, feedback, or development opportunities throughout the year.

Well-designed HR training and development programs change that. By offering ongoing development opportunities, you can help your employees feel more engaged and motivated. In fact, 94% of employees say they would stay longer at a company that invests in their learning. When paired with strong performance management practices, training provides managers with clear metrics to evaluate progress — helping employees enter year-end reviews feeling prepared rather than anxious.

This article examines how HR support, employee development programs, performance management software, and learning management system (LMS) tools work together to make reviews more objective, consistent, and effective for managers and employees.

To be successful, training and development require active involvement and buy-in from business owners and leaders. At the same time, HR plays a critical role by creating structure, aligning learning with organizational goals, and ensuring development activities are consistent and meaningful throughout the year.

Some important ways HR and leadership can support and strengthen employee training and development include:

Identifying Skill Gaps and Setting Priorities

HR can collaborate with leadership to identify the capabilities employees need to support business goals. That might include technical upskilling, compliance training, or preparing future leaders.

For growing SMBs, this alignment prevents wasted effort and ensures development initiatives genuinely move the business forward. Without a structured program, training often becomes reactive and focused on fixing immediate issues rather than building long-term capabilities.

Designing Structured Programs

Clear, consistent employee training and development plans help employees understand where they stand, what skills they need to build upon, and how those skills connect to career progression. This structure is especially valuable for SMBs competing for talent, particularly when larger organizations can offer more traditional advancement pathways.

In fact, according to LinkedIn’s 2024 “Workplace Learning Report,” employees who set clear career goals are four times more engaged than those who don’t. This engagement, in turn, translates into more productive year-end performance discussions.

Connecting Learning Milestones to Performance Expectations

HR frameworks also help managers understand how training should inform performance. When learning goals and performance goals are aligned, managers can evaluate progress using objective indicators, reducing bias in and improving the consistency of annual reviews.

For SMBs without dedicated HR staff or with overextended teams, partnering with a professional employer organization (PEO) like G&A Partners can fill these gaps. G&A provides tailored development plans, compliance-focused training, and long-term workforce strategy support to help businesses create structured, performance-driven training programs.

Investing in employee training and development has a measurable impact on engagement and retention. In a 2019 report, Gallup found that organizations that invest in employee development are twice as likely to retain employees and report 11% greater profitability. When employees understand how learning supports their career growth, they become more motivated to improve skills, participate in check-ins, and contribute to year-end discussions.

Clear development pathways also help improve employee performance and productivity by outlining the skills required for advancement and providing employees with a better sense of their progress. For SMBs, structured learning creates a direct connection between development activities and performance expectations, making reviews more productive and goal-oriented.

G&A Partners supports learning by offering HR training and development programs — ranging from leadership development to compliance courses — as well as access to an LMS with thousands of mobile-friendly courses. These tools help businesses build more effective development frameworks and help facilitate more productive performance conversations year-round.

Training Program Examples and How They Tie into Performance Reviews

The training method(s) you choose should align with each employee’s role and development needs.

“When training is aligned to an employee’s role and growth areas, feedback stops being theoretical and becomes actionable,” says Steve Moore, G&A Partners’ manager of Talent and Development. “Employees are clearer on expectations, managers can coach more effectively, and development feels purposeful and not just a check-the-box exercise.”

Below are three widely used training approaches that directly support more effective, structured performance reviews.

1. Skills-Based Training (Role-Specific Development)

Skills-based programs enhance an employee’s ability to perform core responsibilities, such as software proficiency, equipment operation, or customer service.

Impact on performance reviews:

• Provides measurable progress through certifications, quizzes, or skills checklists
• Gives managers clear criteria to evaluate job competency
• Helps assess staff readiness for additional responsibilities or promotions

2. Leadership and Supervisory Training

Moore says that a lack of manager training is a common reason performance management breaks down.

“Leaders who are equipped with the skills to coach, give feedback, and develop their people can shift performance reviews from once-a-year evaluations to ongoing, meaningful development conversations,” says Moore. “As a manager, your job should be to engage, develop, and empower your employees.”

Leadership programs build competencies in communication, delegation, coaching, and conflict resolution. These programs also support succession planning, making it a foundational component of an organization’s performance management process.

Impact on performance reviews:

• Gives managers and future leaders development paths tied to organizational succession plans
• Allows leadership competencies to be assessed objectively
• Supports promotion decisions by documenting readiness for expanded roles

3. Soft Skills and Behavioral Training

These programs enhance practical skills that improve collaboration and workplace relationships, such as problem-solving, communication, time management, emotional intelligence, and teamwork.

Impact on performance reviews:

• Translates subjective feedback into structured behavioral metrics
• Strengthens collaboration and team culture throughout the year
• Aligns naturally with 360-degree feedback models

HR training and development programs make it possible to track employee growth in a consistent, meaningful way throughout the year. Each course completion, certification, or applied skill provides tangible indicators of progress that help managers and employees understand and track how capabilities are evolving. This ensures performance reviews reflect a full year of effort, not just recent memories or isolated observations.

For SMBs, these clear markers of development help make performance conversations more objective, encouraging, and focused on growth and progress, rather than criticism.

Streamline Goal Tracking with Performance Management Software

Modern performance management software streamlines goal setting, milestone tracking, and ongoing feedback for managers and employees. It helps HR teams maintain consistency across departments and ensures all employees are evaluated using fair, transparent standards.

Software also supports a continuous performance management process, offering automated reminders and organized documentation that help managers and employees stay aligned—not just at year-end, but throughout the year.

The Challenges of Manual Tracking

When performance is tracked through spreadsheets, emails, or paper forms, important details can fall through the cracks. This can undermine your training programs and create confusion and frustration for both managers and employees.

Manual tracking often results in:

• Lost or inconsistent documentation
• Missed follow-ups and incomplete reviews
• Bias caused by focusing on recent events instead of year-round performance
• Limited visibility into training and development progress
• Administrative overwhelm, especially for small HR teams

G&A’s performance management software helps eliminate these challenges by documenting year-round feedback, automating reminders, and offering 360-degree review capabilities, making it easier for managers to monitor progress consistently and carry objective insights into annual performance reviews.

Performance Management Examples and Their Impact on Employee Growth

Choosing the right performance management approach helps managers give clearer feedback and helps employees better understand expectations, progress, and development opportunities.

Below are four practical techniques you can incorporate into your performance management process:

1. SMART Goal Setting

SMART goals involve setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals that clarify what success looks like. This approach gives employees a roadmap for growth and allows managers to anchor feedback in observable outcomes rather than general impressions.

2. 360-Degree Feedback

A 360-degree feedback approach gathers insights from peers, subordinates, supervisors, and other stakeholders to create a comprehensive picture of an employee’s strengths and performance, while also identifying any areas for improvement.

Because it highlights performance from multiple perspectives, it is especially effective for roles that involve teamwork, leadership, or customer interaction. Integrating this feedback into annual reviews helps managers make more balanced, fair, and actionable assessments while also helping employees see how their contributions impact others across the organization.

3. Continuous Performance Management

Continuous performance management involves monthly or quarterly check-ins that allow employees and managers to review goals, address challenges, and discuss progress. These conversations keep employees supported throughout the year, reduce the pressure of a one-time annual review, and help maintain alignment between learning activities and performance goals.

4. Competency-Based Assessments

Competency-based assessments evaluate performance based on predefined skills or behaviors, such as communication, teamwork, customer service, technical ability, or safety compliance. This approach evaluates relevant skills, promotes fairness and transparency, and helps employees understand exactly which strengths they can build on and which skills offer opportunities for development.

A modern learning management system is software that serves as a centralized hub for learning, tracking, compliance, and ongoing development and performance alignment. With an LMS, all training programs, whether skills-based, leadership-focused, or compliance-related, are housed in one place. Employees can easily access courses, managers gain visibility into development progress, and HR teams can streamline training administration, all of which strengthen performance conversations throughout the year.

Streamline HR Training and Development with Automated Alerts and Real-Time Visibility

Modern LMS platforms send automated reminders for upcoming or overdue courses, helping SMBs maintain compliance and keep development on track. They also give managers a clear snapshot of an employee’s learning journey, including:

• Which courses employees have completed
• Assessment scores
• Certificates earned
• Skill gaps
• Learning recommendations

This real-time visibility supports more accurate and meaningful performance reviews and gives employees a clearer sense of their own progress.

LMS Data Strengthens Year-End Evaluations

When training progress is tied to performance goals, LMS data becomes a powerful tool for both managers and employees. It helps:

• Provide objective evidence of progress and learning
• Highlight strengths and identify development opportunities
• Evaluate readiness for new responsibilities or advancement
• Reduce recency bias by showing a full-year learning history

G&A’s LMS simplifies performance reviews by centralizing training content, offering thousands of courses, and providing real-time reporting that directly links employee learning to performance goals. It also helps your business track development more effectively with automated alerts, detailed dashboards, and intuitive reporting.

LMS Course Example and How It Supports Effective Year-End Reviews

Consider an employee who completes a structured development pathway in the LMS, such as a six-course track covering customer service excellence, communication, and conflict resolution.

As the employee progresses, the LMS automatically records key data points, including:

• Course completions
• Assessment scores
• Certificates earned
• Overall learning progress

This creates a clear, year-round record of the employee’s development and the skills they have strengthened.

During the annual performance review, this learning data becomes a valuable resource, enabling:

• Managers to reference concrete learning results to evaluate improvement
• Certificates and assessment results to support recognition or advancement
• Learning gaps to become actionable goals for the upcoming year
• Employees to enter the review feeling prepared, supported, and confident in their progress

This data-driven approach makes reviews more objective, constructive, and aligned with longer-term career goals.

Effective training programs work best when they are intentional, structured, and consistently supported. The following best practices offer practical steps for establishing an effective performance review process that aligns with your business objectives and fosters employee development.

Align Training With Business and Individual Goals

Training is most effective when it supports clear, role-specific expectations and long-term business objectives. By connecting employee training and development opportunities to both organizational priorities and individual career goals, employees understand the purpose behind each program and how it supports their growth. This alignment also makes it easier for managers to evaluate progress during performance reviews and identify next steps in an employee’s development.

Rather than waiting for quarterly or annual reviews, monitoring development throughout the year keeps momentum strong and ensures that learning translates into real performance gains. A learning management system can help managers track course completions, assessment scores, and skills progress in real-time. This ongoing insight allows leaders to offer support earlier, recognize and celebrate achievements as they occur, and ensure employees feel guided, not just evaluated.

Provide Ongoing Feedback

Regular feedback helps employees understand what they are doing well and where they can grow or improve, making the connection between training and day-to-day performance clearer and more supportive. These conversations create stronger alignment between learning and expectations, helping employees feel supported rather than evaluated. Over time, consistent feedback contributes to a review process that feels fair, transparent, and growth-oriented.

Document Achievements

Capturing progress, such as certifications, completed training modules, peer feedback, and milestone achievements, ensures that growth is visible and not forgotten during annual reviews. Documentation gives managers a more complete and accurate view of an employee’s contributions and highlights how training has influenced their performance. It also gives employees tangible evidence of their accomplishments throughout the year.

Use Technology to Streamline Admin Work

Tools like performance management software and LMS platforms reduce administrative work and help leaders stay organized. By automating reminders, managing learning paths, and centralizing progress data, technology allows HR teams to shift more time toward strategy and employee support rather than manual tasks. These systems directly improve employee performance by providing the structure, resources, and feedback that support year-round growth.