How not to do performance appraisal!

It's surprising that after all these years, we still don't get the basics of performance appraisal right.

Hettie's story

I met my friend Hettie last night who said she'd had an incredibly frustrating day. Her boss has decided that:

- They would start doing formal performance appraisals (in a team of 5), for the first time ever 

- There would be a form filling exercise that my Hettie had to complete for each of her team of 4

- Hettie, who runs the business, does the accounts and supervises the rest of the team, had to complete the whole process including forms, one-to-ones meetings and goal setting by the end of the week; she's going on holiday tomorrow for two weeks...

- Despite the pressure, Hettie did all the paperwork, ran the appraisal meetings and reported back to her boss

- Her boss told her to go back and rewrite the goals because they weren't SMART; he had not explained to Hettie what this meant at the beginning of the process, not had he shown Hettie any examples. 

Result? An extremely tired and frustrated team leader, bewildered team members and another bad mark for performance appraisal!

Would a regular catch up more effective than once a year?

Is this type of appraisal process really necessary for such a small team? I don't think so. A one to one discussion, an agreed way to record goals and training needs, and the ability to get feedback from colleagues, would be more effective and less painful. 

At what point do you start making this more formal? A more formal process makes more sense with a larger team, but even then, is it really necessary? Many companies are changing their annual process to a more regular but less admin heavy task. A catch up once a quarter, some recent 360 feedback and a quick check on goal progress can be a much more positive experience. 

Of course you do need some consistency across a number of teams, so that people are appraised fairly, but think about cutting out parts of the process that are not all necessary.

Communicate, guide and train

A key element to remember, whatever your process, is to think about what and how you communicate to managers and team. They need to understand what the process is for, what will happen, what they need to do and what they're going to get out of it. In particular, line managers and team leaders must have some training and guidance (unlike Hettie), otherwise they are left feeling let down and frustrated. 

The CIPD's research-based advice for effective performance management includes the following elements:

• Regular feedback
• Regular discussions including what has gone well, as well as areas for improvement
• A two-way exchange between the employee and the manager
• For the manager, the ability to ask good questions, actively listen and give constructive feedback