So You Have To Conduct an Employee Appraisal?

As a manager, performance management of your employees to give the best possible results is a key skill you need to develop. Performance management through an employee performance review is all about helping your employees be the best they can be, working to their maximum efficiency and removing any organizational or system blocks to their success.

By setting up a clear employee appraisal system that all of your team understands, you will maximize the potential for employee success (and give you a clear system to manage both good and poor employee performance).

An employee performance appraisal system comprises of gaining a common understanding between both you and an employee of:

• The details of the work to be done

• How you want the work to be performed (this may include things such as instructions on things such as approach, style, internal politics or resources)

• Measures of success – how you will both know the task has been successfully completed

• Areas of strength and areas for development within the employee challenges

• Areas the employee is interested in

• Recognition and employee incentives for successfully completing the task.

Successful employee evaluations are ones where you end up with a common understanding between you and your employee on these areas. If you don't have a shared understanding, then you have failed in conducting your employee performance evaluation.

The best way to have a successful employee evaluation is to ensure it is a two way discussion. You need to listen more than you talk, and you need to listen to and accept feedback about your own personal style and areas for growth as well as provide direct feedback to your team member.

The Employee Appraisal Cycle

All employee appraisal systems operate on a four stage cycle. The stages of the cycle are:

1. Goal Setting - Setting clear goals and objectives
2. Doing the work – Where the employee performs the work
3. Review - Reviewing the achievement of the work against the goals and objectives
4. Goal Setting - Setting new goals and objectives

It is very easy for a manager to get hooked into only doing the review step of employee appraisals and ignoring the goal setting phase. If you miss out any of the steps in the cycle you will never get the best you can out of your employees.

Employee Appraisal Goal Setting

Setting clear goals and objectives is a critical part of any employee appraisal system. You need to look at the overall business goals and objectives and then look at how the particular employee's role contributes to the business success.

The goal setting phase generally is a relatively formal process that is documented. However, the level of formality varies between companies and managers.

Doing the work

At this stage of the cycle your role is to remove any organizational roadblocks, provide broad guidance and advice and allow the person to perform their role to the best of their ability. You should be giving them regular informal feedback so they know if they are off track and what they need to do to get back on track.

Employee Performance Review

If you have performed your role correctly in the doing the work phase, you can move into the review phase with confidence. The number one rule is there should be no surprises for an employee during an employee appraisal review. They should already know what you think about their performance from all of the informal feedback you have been giving them. All the review really is, is a review and summation of all of this feedback.

Employee performance reviews can be held every 6 or 12 months, depending on your business cycle. At the review stage, you then set new goals and objectives for the coming cycle.

Employee Appraisal Tip #1 – Get Your Relationships Right First

If there is one tip I can give any manager going into an employee appraisal is you need to get your relationship with your employees right first. If you know and value your employees as people first, they are more likely to value and respect what you have to say. Take the time to get to know your employees first and you will have much more effective employee appraisals.

Employee Appraisal Tip #2 – Focus On The Employee Not The Forms

New managers can get hooked into correctly filling in employee appraisal forms, or clicking in the right box for completing the process. Employee performance evaluations are not about how well you fill in a form, they are about forging a deep business relationship with your employee and gaining a common understanding about their roles and accountabilities.

Sometimes it is easier to put the forms in the bottom drawer of the desk and just focus on the discussion. Only pull out the forms to summarise what you talked about at the end of the session. That way you can give 100% of your attention to the person sitting in front of you, and not to working out which bit of the form you are supposed to be filling in next.

Employee Appraisal Tip #3 - No Surprises!

As we have already discussed, if you are doing your job as a manager correctly, your employee will not be surprised by your feedback (either positive or negative) during their performance appraisal.

Employee Appraisal Tip #4 – Only Talk About What You Personally Have Observed

This is a tricky one for many managers. When giving feedback, you need to focus on the behavior you personally observed, not what you interpret the behavior to mean. For example: "You have had 5 Monday's off sick in the last 3 months" compared to "You always throw a sickie on a Monday".

When you talk about what you have observed you take the emotion out of the issue and give the person a chance to put their side of the story. Think of it like you are before the courts – hearsay and assumptions are not accepted, but observable evidence is.

When you give feedback on observed behaviours, it is best if you are very specific about what you saw and when. Don't drop into generalizations such as "you always are sick on a Monday", be specific.

Employee Appraisal Tip #5 – Document Your Process

It doesn't matter what process or system you use for your performance appraisals, just make sure it is written down, your employees know what is going to happen when and you follow the documented process.

By writing it down you give your employees the best opportunity to prepare themselves for their performance appraisal, they know how their performance will be measured and what happens during their successful employee performance review.