Appraisals the word that strikes dread into every HR person, manager and employee. Let’s be honest, no-one likes appraisals, no-one wants to fill them out and no-one wants to have appraisal meetings. They are a yearly chore, one that is inevitably put off for as long as possible and then hastily filled out prior to the annual appraisal meeting. I, like most employees, would have my objectives set and then promptly not look at them again until “appraisal time”. At which point I would struggle to remember what I had actually done over the last 12 months. In addition, some of the objectives would have changed, some put on hold and others, well who knows.
As a manager I would also be responsible for reviewing my teams objectives and giving feedback. And as HR director I would be responsible for overseeing the whole company’s appraisals. There was talk of consistency, fairness and transparency and I believe that most managers and organisations have good intentions but in reality, appraisals don’t work.
Time consuming
A lot of time is spent on appraisals. First, there is the annual senior management review of the key objectives. Most organisations start the objection setting process a few months before the start of the financial year. The exec’s have their objectives agreed and these are cascaded down to their teams. Everyone may have a compliance objective, financial objective, people objective and so it goes on. More meetings take place until everyone in the organisation has their objectives. They are then stuck in a drawer and left there, gathering dust for 12 months until review time. How much time are employees and managers spending on a process for something that is not used?
Giving feedback
The other problem with appraisals is that we are reviewing past performance and giving feedback retrospectively plus who can honestly remember what happened 12 months ago? We are more likely to give feedback based onrecent observations of performance, or achievement of goals. Appraisals by their nature focus on what employees could do to improve and whilst we badge this up as development and identifying areas for improvement in reality we stuck in cycle of telling employees they need to improve.
What do you use appraisals for?
Appraisals are typically used for development, achieving goals and targets, pay increases, bonuses and people management. A lot to ask of a process that doesn’t work. In all my years in HR appraisals have never been used in a performance management conversation, a manager has never come to me waving an appraisal document as evidence that an employee needs to be managed.
As well as being used for an administrative process, appraisals are used for pay for performance or to determine bonus payments. In my experience bonus and pay increases have already been decided based on the amount in the pot and how much the organisation can afford to pay.
Often managers know who they want to “look after” and give a bigger pay rise to. If appraisals are used to justify, it is likely that those employees will have received the highest score. Worse still is the award of a flat percentage across the board, a cost of living or inflationary award. The fast way for employees to lose faith in the appraisal process is to award them the same percentage amount as the team member they know isn’t performing. In essence appraisals become a tick box exercise.
Then of course there’s the bell curve, where employees are clustered around a mean score, with some falling below and some above. Many organisations use this on the basis that most employees will get an average score and then there will be some with more and some with less. This suggests that most employees performance will be average and evidence suggests that most managers will score employees in the middle year after year. Most employees of course will rate themselves higher and are then disappointed. Really though what is the point of going through a pre-determined process?
Time to change.
Appraisals have been around for years and so we keep using them. They have just become one of those process we think we need, a justification to give or not give a pay increase. An illusion that we are using them to achieve goals and objectives, which in reality change and evolve as soon as they are agreed.
So, what can we do differently? What do you want your team to achieve? What is the one goal which will make a difference? Make that the focus, give team members weekly goals which they commit to and then report back on weekly in team meetings. If things change or evolve then the goals move and change accordingly. Holding people accountable and giving feedback in real time, means they are more likely to achieve and learn. Feedback is valuable and is implemented.
Final thoughts.
Isn’t it time we stopped clinging on to an outdated process and implemented a process employees can get on board with which is a continuous and evolving process, not a once every Think about what you are hoping to achieve with the appraisal process and how you can make this an ongoing process. Regular check ins, accountability, a continuous feedback loop and not a once every 12 months review of an outdated document looking what we could’ve done better.
