Appraisals
Are Here to Stay (Probably)
Whatever your view is about appraisals,
it does not look as though most companies are going to scrap them just yet.
Managers vary in their enthusiasm for appraisals. Some think they are an
essential performance management tool. Many, however, would disagree, amongst
whom I number myself. I won’t go into my reasons just now. I’ll save them for
another article. I’ll just content myself with telling you that I’m in good
company. No less a figure than Douglas McGregor was pretty critical of
appraisals – but that’s another story for another time. Many HR managers, writes Josh Bersin, want to
“…revamp,
redesign, or eliminate the performance appraisal process. And for good reason:
our research shows that more than 70% of all organizations dislike the process
they have and I have yet to talk with an employee or manager who likes it at
all (one client calls it a ‘soul-crushing exercise’).”
I may not be a lover of the appraisal
process, but I do conduct appraisals. As much as I dislike appraisals, I take
the view that I have a duty to the appraisee to ensure that I am thoroughly prepared
to conduct the appraisal. Therefore, I should exhort you to take the same
approach, whatever your view of performance appraisals.
You may not like the process that you
have to work with. Your appraisee may feel the same. That does not mean,
though, that the process will not prove to be mutually beneficial if you go
about things in the right way. Here are a few tips about preparing to conduct
an appraisal. And being prepared is a good starting point.
Ensure
That You Are Thoroughly Prepared for the Appraisal
An old friend of mine used to teach
economics at a college. Appraisals were first introduced at his college in the
mid-1990s, when he’d been teaching there for just less than two years. His appraiser
got him completely mixed up with another economics teacher – amazingly as there
were only two economics teachers – one of each gender. In the appraiser’s
defence he had only taken on the line management role about six months
previously; however, if there was ever an egregious example of under
preparation…
That example is extreme, but it
demonstrates the point. You want the appraisee to have confidence in the
process and in you. As myhrmbook.com says:
“Preparing for the interview is very
important, having a prepared interviewer will make the interviewee more
confident that the review of their performance is being done properly and this
in turn will make them more likely to listen to advice given”
Keep
it Factual and Avoid Judgments Unsupported by Evidence
This is very much related to the
preparation point above. You are appraising another person’s performance. To do
this you need evidence and you need to base your appraisal on that evidence.
Mike Toten of workplaceinfo.com says that you should:
“Collect
objective and relevant information about employee performance. Examples include
records of work quantity and quality, customer feedback, financial information,
accident/incident reports, attendance records, warnings/disciplinary notices,
and previous performance management documents. To these, add the employee’s job
description and previously-agreed performance goals/objectives.”
It’s worth just taking a moment to look
in a little detail at what Mike Toten says. Making sure that your evidence is objective
and relevant might seem obvious. But what is objective and what is relevant can
sometimes be open to question. For example, to take one of Mike’s evidential
sources, customer feedback may be highly subjective and not entirely relevant.
If your appraisee complains that a particularly harsh customer assessment was
motivated by vexation and malice the objectivity of the feedback is questioned.
If the customer’s feedback relates to matters outside the appraisee’s job, then
the relevance of that feedback is under question. Having said all of this, see
the next section, below.
A
Good Appraisal Has No Surprises
One of the main reasons for my lack of
enthusiasm for performance appraisals is that I believe that performance
management is something that is continuous. It never quite chimes for me that
you should have this big thing once a year (or twice a year, perhaps). Managers
should meet regularly with their line reports. For this reason, if you conduct
an appraisal and there are a few surprises, I’m afraid it means you haven’t
done your job throughout the year.
There should be no surprises for you and
no surprises for your appraisee. If targets were set at the previous appraisal
and they haven’t been met: there is something wrong if you find out only at the
next appraisal. If your appraisee has received some poor customer feedback during
the year: it is too late to raise it for the first time at the appraisal. If
your appraisee is struggling with his job: you should not be waiting for the
appraisal to tell him and he should be confident in coming to talk things
through with you at any time. Appraisals are part of a wider process, say
smallbusiness.co.uk, therefore:
“The key to
staff appraisal meetings is that there should be no surprises. For instance, if
an employee tells a manager that the six months since the last review have gone
really badly, it should not be the first they’ve heard of it.”
Don’t
Be Afraid to Praise
There are some managers who believe that
managing is all about telling their line reports how badly they [their line
reports] are doing. They do this not just at appraisals; though they do it
especially at appraisals. I’ve never understood why appraisees should not be
praised for what they have done well. An appraisee should walk out of an
appraisal with a spring in her step. She should feel that her good work has
been recognised.
Managers who use the appraisal as a
forum for bullying appraisees by telling them all the things they haven’t done;
how poorly they’ve done the things they have done, and all the things they must
do to improve are very poor managers – and in their limited defence, they are probably
subjected to the same experience at their appraisals.
Be
a Good Listener
The appraisal is not about you. It can’t
work well without you, but it will work better if you realise that it is the
appraisee’s chance to talk to you about his job. For this reason you have to be
prepared to listen. You need to conduct the meeting skilfully. You can’t let
the appraisee dictate everything, but you should be prepared to listen and ask
the right questions.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t
offer advice. It is an appraisal, after all. But you should be appraising the
performance of the appraisee based on the evidence that is before you and that
evidence includes what the appraisee has to say.
In
Summary
Appraisals are not to everyone’s taste.
You can, though, do one of two things. You can pay lip service to the process
and completely waste a couple of hours. Alternatively, both you and the
appraisee can take the view that you are going to gain from the process and
conduct yourselves on that basis.
Garry Costain is
the Managing Director of Caremark Thanet, a domiciliary care provider with
offices in Margate, Kent. Caremark Thanet provides home care services
throughout the Isle of Thanet. Garry can be contacted on 01843 235910 or email
garry.costain@caremark.co.uk. You can also visit Caremark Thanet's website at www.caremark.co.uk/thanet.
No comments:
Post a Comment