Performance Appraisals
What’s the point? It’s a waste of everybody’s time and then the forms get filed until next year…..
Are you a victim of this sceptical belief?
Successful appraisals should be simply one aspect of performance management or employee relations. Performance management is a holistic process which draws together many elements which together contribute to the effective management of individuals and teams; in turn, achieving higher levels of organisational performance.
Performance management is strategic in that it is about broader issues and long term goals and integrated in that it links various aspects of the business, people management, individuals and teams.
On the other hand, performance appraisal is operational, short to medium term in its focus and concerned only with the individual and their performance and development. It is one of the tools of performance management and the data produced can feed into other elements of performance management but by itself does not constitute performance management.
But, first things first – appraisals need to be more than an informal chat whenever an issue arises. Designing an appraisal process commonly starts with the forms. Keep them simple and focussed upon getting the employee to consider and articulate their own goals and aspirations. These forms will form the basis for a fair and consistent process. But this is not about the forms, it’s about the process and the actual human interactions itself – and, most of all, the follow up!
The performance appraisal or review provides an opportunity for your employees and those concerned with their performance – whether it be their team leader, project manager or director - to get together to engage in a dialogue about the individual’s performance, development and the support required from the manager. It should not be a top down process where the manager makes pronouncements about what they think nor an opportunity for one person to ask questions and the other to reply. It should be a free flowing conversation in which a range of views are exchanged, but above all the forum for the employee to drive the direction of their career development.
Performance appraisals commonly review past behaviour and so provide an opportunity to reflect on past performance. But one of the reasons that performance reviews are viewed in a negative light is because they dwell entirely on the past and seem to focus on any negative issues that may have arisen in the past time period.
To be successful the main focus of appraisals should be the formulation of development and improvement plans and reaching agreement about what should be done in the future.
Seize the opportunity to learn what motivates your employees and help them to achieve their goals as well as those of the company. This should be the archetypal “win-win” situation.