PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

“Done right, performance review is one of the best opportunities to encourage and support high performers and constructively improve your middle and lower-tier workers”

Performance appraisal is the process of periodic assessment of an employee’s job performance as a way to bring development in their career and to scrutinize if they are meeting the expectations set out by your organization. Appraisals are usually designed by human resources departments as they provide individuals with feedback and give them guidance if they fall short. Do you know companies who conduct frequent appraisals will experience lower turnover costs? Isn’t that amazing?

Depending on the type of feedback, a performance appraisal is also a window of opportunity for your organization to acknowledge employee achievements and future potential.

Performance appraisals help determine how to allocate the funds to award incentives, such as raises and bonuses. It also provides a way for the companies to determine which employees have contributed the most to your company’s growth so companies can reward their top-performing employees accordingly as recognition is the number one thing employees say their manager could give them to inspire them to produce great work.

Frequent manager feedback matters a lot to the employee in their performance contribution and also helps them do better on their job. What is the right time for your company to conduct a Performance Appraisal?

Performance management is an ongoing process. Employee engagement goes down significantly when you don’t conduct performance appraisals on a regular basis. Facts say that Companies which conduct frequent appraisals experience lower turnover costs. Formal reviews or appraisals often take place on a yearly, half yearly or quarterly basis. How frequent does performance appraisal take place at your company?

Many employees complain that their appraisal feedback is not properly conducted/ evaluated. Below mentioned are a few Types of Performance Appraisals methods you can opt for that will help in giving accurate results:

With the right performance appraisal method and performance management system like Wallet HR, organizations can enhance employee’s performance within the organization. A good employee performance review method can make the whole experience effective and rewarding.

360-degree feedback assessment: This method necessitates giving out a questionnaire to co-workers, peers, clients, supervisors, and customers regarding a colleague’s performance. It is a time consuming process but it also improves credibility. The manager can consider this feedback by evaluating the performance at the end of the quarter/year.

Management by objective: In this method, managers and employees work together to identify, plan, organize, and communicate goals for success periodically. Over regular meetings, the manager and employee discuss the progress made. The employer can then use these measures of progress as a guide to measuring the contribution level of the employee. Here both the manager and the subordinates know what is expected of them and hence there is no role ambiguity or confusion. On the other side there is considerable paperwork involved and it takes too much of the manager’s time. Too many meetings and too many reports add to the manager’s responsibility and burden.

Critical incident method: In this method, an employer evaluates an employee based on specific events, known as “critical incidents”, process-specific incidents are identified and described in which the employee either succeeded immensely or failed in any given task. They then store the detailed records from the different incidents in the journal. It is based on direct observation by the manager and not second-hand accounts.

Behaviorally anchored rating scales method: This method is often thought of as being the most effective, as it succeeds in bringing out both the qualitative and quantitative benefits of the performance appraisal process. In the Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS) system, the employer compares employee performance with specific behavioral examples that are anchored to numerical ratings. It is considered formatted and is a mix of critical incident technique and rating scale.

Manual VS automated performance appraisal. Which one is better? Let’s look at these options closely.

Manual performance appraisal

• Employee data is magnificent and requires a lot of changes and interpretation.
• In a manually maintained system, one cannot track if employees travel along the organization’s goals because they don’t have a proper tracking system in place.
• Managers may not have proper analysis on every employee’s performances.
• Performance appraisal when done manually involves labor intense work followed by one-on-one meetings, discussions and lots of paperwork.
• To remember the achievements and failed results of each employee from day 1 till date is not merely possible. Therefore managers tend to remember only the recent performances of employees.

Automated performance appraisal

• Provides quick analysis on the dashboard and generates reports easily.
• It keeps track of the employee data
• Keeps the record of employee achievements.
• Employee information can be accessed from anywhere on any device
• Maintain a balanced approach and objective feedback through 360 degree feedback review