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November 2015
Can You Really Use Appraisals To Develop Your People? 

Dear <<First Name>>,

Appraisals are just one of the tools you can use for developing your people and helping them, and therefore your business, to grow. Do you use them actively, or do you and your people groan at the very thought of appraisals?
 
Too many businesses use appraisals as the only tool for identifying Personal Development needs. Forms are filled in (sometimes!) in the hope of getting through the meeting as quickly as possible. However, used properly, appraisals can really help you to develop your people and your business. In this issue of Pep Talk we’ll look at how you can do this.
 
Please feel free to send this newsletter to anyone you know who wants to get more from their people and their organisation.                         
 
  Best wishes,
 
  Michelle Prescott

Can You Really Use Appraisals To Develop Your People?

Whether you call it an appraisal or a performance review, the process used by most organisations usually follows the same format. It is a specific meeting held once or twice a year, during which a line manager meets with an employee to review their performance objectives, as well as their training and development needs. Appraisal meetings often follow a set process of preparation, meeting format and follow up that requires completion of various forms.
 
In my experience the mention of appraisals can produce a gamut of responses from adoration, through ambivalence to abhorrence. The responses are usually governed by the quality of the process. Negative factors can include:
 

  • An over reliance on paperwork that asks exam type questions which seem to require essay answers
  • The process is imposed from on high
  • Agreed actions are not followed up
  • The process stays the same and each meeting becomes a repetition of the last
  • It is used to bring up issues that are a surprise to the employee.

The common denominators where appraisals are seen positively include:
  • Paperwork is used as a guide and it is not compulsory to fill in lots of boxes or information
  • The focus is on personal development needs and how these can be met
  • Regular follow up meetings happen after the ‘main’ meeting which lead to agreed personal development needs being met
  • The emphasis is on the individual to also take responsibility for their personal development, and not just the manager dictating to the employee how they want them to develop.

 
“Why do you need appraisals?”
 
When I ask why an organisation wants to introduce an appraisal process, it often highlights a problem that needs to be resolved with a different approach, such as performance management. Performance and behavioural issues should be tackled separately as they arise and should not be stored up for an appraisal meeting.
 
What I would like to hear is that organisations want to conduct appraisals to identify and meet the individual development needs of their employees and thereby drive their organisation forward. It is not compulsory to have an appraisal process and one shouldn’t be introduced just because other organisations have them, or as a way of confronting people with issues.
 
Some appraisals are structured so that the employee can receive a pay increase or bonus payment if they achieve set targets or objectives. Don’t presume that doing this automatically leads to increased productivity or performance. There is no foolproof appraisal process linked to a pay increase or bonus that will guarantee significantly increased outputs or performance. If you have or are considering developing appraisals linked to salary increases or bonus payments, you need to think very carefully about the process and the additional work and challenges that it can create. From my experience I wouldn’t recommend having an appraisal process linked to pay, as the problems outweigh the potential benefits. 
 
It may be that your organisation dictates that an ineffective review process remains in place, and you are not able to change it. In this case, consider other factors to use as motivators when planning objectives and identifying training and development needs for your team. And remember that the process doesn’t prevent you from having regular one to one meetings with your team members, to discuss their ongoing development needs outside of the set procedures. Don’t wait for an annual meeting to sort out a problem.

 

How Do You Get Started with Appraisals?

If you want to introduce or update an appraisal process as part of a wider People Development strategy, (whether or not it is linked to pay increases or bonus payments) start by looking at the wealth of information available online. A common theme will be that an essential part of developing any process is gathering input from the employees and managers who are actually going to be using it. They are fundamental to the success of an appraisal process. It is also important that it reflects the culture and values of your organisation.
 
One problem evident in many organisations is that writing up appraisal forms becomes a time consuming chore for line managers. Instead, ask your employees to be responsible for writing up brief notes from the meeting. You can even leave it to your employees to identify and approach their own mentor, or present a case for a course they want to go on. It is more likely to be done if the employee is keen to do it, rather than being something that the manager dictates that they should do.
 
The most effective processes I have seen specify that regular one to one meetings continue to take place after the ‘main’ appraisal meeting to progress objectives and development. This gives the opportunity to check if agreed actions are being delivered. Remember that as the line manager, you and the process will lose credibility if you fail to deliver on agreed actions!
 
One final note – there are other ways to develop your people without using appraisals. If you’d like to talk about the best options for your business, do get in touch.


www.PersonaPM.co.uk
Michelle.Prescott@PersonaPM.co.uk

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