End of Q1 2016 in view: why companies observe quarterly reviews
In the business -and academic- world, the year is shared into four quarters i.e Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4. A quarter is one-fourth, 1⁄4, 25% or 0.25 and may refer to Fiscal quarter, one-fourth (three months) of a fiscal year as explained by wiki. If you did the maths, you would find that there are at least 90days in each quarter and even up to 92days if you got lucky. Reviews are done quarterly to realign employees with the overall targets for that year and ensure everyone is on the same page in terms of the long-term goals of the company. While most companies use a uniform calendar standard, there are a few exceptions and this varies from company to company. It is safe to say reviews are a way of evaluating the company’s standing and brainstorming new approaches to attack situations from the company front as against waiting the whole year before reviewing these strategies.
The end of each quarter marks the time when companies sit together with the ‘who and who’s’ of the company to do a review of how the quarter was spent. CEO’s and investors gauge the performance of how well or how badly their companies are doing tangibly (financially) and intangibly (diplomacy, network, company culture and a host of other unquantifiables). An article written by Investopedia explains that “Companies, investors, and analysts often use data from different quarters to make comparisons and evaluate trends. Because there are four quarters in a year, one may evaluate a company’s performance over time with a much higher degree of specificity than if one were doing so on a yearly basis. For instance, an investor may track a company’s performance over the last eight quarters to determine if the company is consistently performing well.”
Another plus that can be attributed to this quarterly approach of reviewing an organization’s growth or fall is that companies can know their best and worst practices and channel their efforts in line with what has clearly affected their growth positively.
It is a given that reviews help companies reiterate their goals, objectives, aims, values and cultures into the minds of their employees, hence improving productivity and ultimately, agreeing on the strategies and initiatives to run with in the successive quarter.