Employee Appraisal

Overview of Employee Appraisal

After an entire year of working hard, the one day that employee appraisal is waiting for more eagerly than the holidays is the day of the appraisal. It is like their personal judgment day when all their deeds are paid off for. The purpose of announcing appraisals is to show the employees that their hard work does not go unnoticed and motivates them to work with more zeal. Employee appraisal is also a medium to ensure that the organization’s employees are kept updated about all the latest developments in the company and the skies that they might need to develop in the near future to accept the change that has happened and work accordingly.

However, it is a testing task to decide and access the employee’s performance appraisal if you are the manager. Several things need to be taken care of and paid attention to before moving on to decide who is deserving and who is not. Here are some tips to make it easier for the managers to make the decision:

8 Best tips to do an employee appraisal

Below are the different tips for doing an employee appraisal:

1. Prepare a list carefully

As a manager, you must do proper research and careful planning before giving appraisals to people. To start with, you should first go through the responsibilities and guidelines provided in the job description for a particular post. They enable you to assess the performance appraisal of employees easily. In order to keep things easy and fair, inform the appraiser in advance about the qualifications, skills, and areas that will be taken into consideration while doing the appraisal. This will ensure that they do not feel disheartened when something they did not do well is discussed during the appraisal.

Start with examining their skills and what areas have they performed best in. Look for their contributions to projects that have involved teamwork and how well have they been able to perform under pressure. Certain major characteristics that are taken notice of during employee appraisal are the leadership quality among the individuals, how they react when it comes to sorting out some last moment glitches, and their interpersonal skills. This ensures flawless methodology while giving an appraisal and makes it easier for the managers to calculate and understand the shortcomings and skills of employee appraisal for working with them.

2. Give them a due amount of time.

It is quite common to face some very nervous candidates during the appraisal who cannot put out what they want to say due to their nervousness. Obviously, things such as these might happen since it is a big day for the employee appraisal, and they tend to go through their yearlong work simply to put forward the best they have done. Thus, it is better to assign them a particular amount of time before you go ahead with the appraisal so as to let them prepare what they want to say and how to want to take things.

This boosts their confidence and helps them assess an employee’s performance appraisal over the year clearly and impartially. If they need some previous papers or documents, make sure they are provided with them to keep them at ease. They might need the cops off their previous appraisal documents. Therefore, it is better if you get them all printed and kept in handy to provide the employee appraisal. Just make sure that they are sure and prepared for their appraisal.

3. Take time and keep it easy.

An appraisal is an important event for your employees as well as for the seniors. It is important to decide certain things in advance and prepare for the employee appraisal accordingly. For example, the amount of time that you give for the appraisal of each employee shall be divided in such a way that none of them feels that it was a process they had to hurry through or they have to stop from speaking out everything they want to due to the shortage of time. The better it is organized, the more successful an event will be.

Take your time to focus on each employee’s appraisal, their performance, and their shortcomings so that you can guide them through with things. Ensure that you are not disturbed during the process, and if possible, make a note of things that you want to discuss with each individual well before the meeting while you are going through their work and assessing their performance appraisal of an employee. It will ensure that you do not miss out on anything important during the process. Make sure it looks comfortable and is formal yet a pleasurable experience for both of you.

4. Think of development as a whole

Usually, it has been noticed that appraisals turn out to be a rather your experience for the employee appraisal and the employers since the two are not able to put forth what they expect from each other really well. If that happens, it further makes things nasty for the coming year, and the same is repeated because the two of you did not put your ideas and expectations in front of each other properly. Thus, both the employee appraisal and the employer must know that the prime aim behind the work is development; it can be the development of the employees as individuals, the company as a whole, and the team they work with.

As an employer, you need to think of ways to improve employee working and performance appraisal and make sure that the goals and expectations that they have set are realistic. If they are not, you should try and tell them about ways in which they can develop their skills in a better way. It is not an easy task for either of you and therefore, it is better to prepare for it beforehand.

5. Think of all the possible issues that might arise

The employees often come up with certain issues of theirs that have been troubling them at the workspace and the reason behind their not up to the mark performance appraisal of an employee. As a manager, it is better to assess beforehand the issues that might be raised in front of you during the appraisal meeting and the solutions you can offer for these issues. It can be an embarrassing situation if you fail to provide them with a proper solution since you are the one responsible for the workplace.

The issues can be anything like the requirement of training by a few employees to cope with the recent changes that have taken place at the workplace or things like the common rifts between the workers at the workplace that have been bothering them. If an employee is falling prey to office politics, it is better to discuss such issues here and try to find a way to sort his problems out because it gets impossible for an individual to work under such circumstances. Also, try to motivate them from time to time.

6. Plan it well

Decide how you will start with the meeting and what the things are that you want to clarify before the air of discontent and discomfort starts to settle down among an employee’s performance appraisal. Employee appraisal is a fragile meeting, and it is a two-way process. Without your employees’ active participation, you would not be able to get the desired results from an appraisal, and hence, it would not be a successful event. Therefore, try to start off by telling them how exceptional their contribution0 to the company has been and some words of encouragement.

Once they are feeling comfortable enough and settled, you can start off your meeting with a high point, and the discussion will tend to be fruitful. Try to have a friendly and open approach. Informally put questions so as to keep them at ease and let them answer comfortably without getting nervous. Going by the ideal statistics, appraisals are supposed to be 50% taking and 50% business. It is one meeting that lets you know your employees as individuals, and you should make sure that this meeting turns out to be a beneficial experience for both of you.

7. Be factual

It is very important for meetings such as these to have some proof or information to back up whatever you say. It cannot be plain talking, and you are assuming things about them from what they look like. It is very important to have all the papers and data ready to present to them when discussing the appraisal. It clears your ground and gives them proof of things too, which they probably might have forgotten over time.

Do not generalize things. Try to keep the conversation as specific and point to point as possible. When you tell them that there has been a project in which their leadership qualities were tested and failed to work as a team, you should have reports of that project ready to present what you are talking about. While things such as sales are marketing abilities can be discussed depending on your data, you can face trouble when talking about interpersonal skills and relations with fellow employees. There are no facts to back that up; therefore, you might need to do some mindful thinking before meeting how you will convert these things to your employee appraisal.

8. Find solutions for their better performance appraisal of an employee.

Not all employees are exceptionally gifted and perform well. You might come across some workers who have not been able to meet the deadlines or whose work has been below average. It is important to take responsibility to improve the work of these workers too. You need to confront them with the issues that have arisen and told them how they are sore for the company. Tell them about the shortcomings loud and clear, but in a polite manner and try to come up with the same solution.

They might be in need of special training to boost their performance appraisal of the employee, and you shall provide them with that in a cost-effective way so that it is easier for both of you. Do not promise them anything that you do not have the capability to deliver, like training them personally or sitting with them at work after the office for extra hours. These things are unprofessional, and it is better that you provide them with training and proper guidance by professionals rather than investing your time into it.

Appraisals are not always a successful event, and sometimes the matter ends up reaching as far as a court. If the employee appraisal is discriminatory, the chances are that you will be put to question for the same, and you might be punished as well. Therefore, whatever scoring system you come up with, it should be fair for one and all. A lot of offices have witnessed cases of discrimination based on gender, where women are given fewer appraisals as compared to men even though they have done much better work or casteism and religion, where a particular community is given special treatment while the others are looked down to.

These practices are not only unlawful and punishable; they might even lead to a permanent ban on your organization. It is better to discuss things with your employees while the appraisal is going on so that you can provide them with reasonable explanations of the measures you have taken and know what their comments about the same are? If you conduct the appraisals in a friendly and fair manner, it is needless to worry about any such troubles.

Related Articles

The purpose of Employee Appraisal is to motivate them to work with more zeal. Here are some tips to make it easier for managers to take this decision.

1. Leadership Qualities
2. Employee Motivation
3. Performance Management and Appraisal
4. Employee Motivation in the Workplace