Appraisals are essential for all businesses. They are there to better employees, in turn making them more productive whilst showing areas within which they could improve. If you have an effective appraisal process this in turn increases the productivity of your business. It also gives employees a chance to raise any issues they may have and require support with.
The appraisal process
Appraisals are usually conducted between an employee and their line manager or someone higher up such as a director etc. They are used to measure an employees performance against predefined criteria.
All of the subjects discussed is documented and used to determine current ability, strengths, weakness and where they can improve/further develop themselves. The main idea behind appraisals is the hope of increasing an employee’s quality of work, productivity, and efficiency etc.
What should the appraisal include?
The contents of an appraisal are very important, the sort of information we want out of an appraisal are the employees’ thoughts on how they are performing as well as how they think they can improve. The manager conducting can also give their thoughts. Here are (is) a list of what we need to include:
- Goals & objectives
- Tailor appraisals to the individual role (If they are head of marketing we shouldn’t be asking them about a consultant’s role etc)
- Person analytics (new clients brought in by employee etc)
What sort of question should you ask the employee?
When it comes to managers asking questions, most employers don’t have a defined appraisal process. This is where we need to develop and implement one to ensure all appraisals are conducted in the same way. Below is some examples of questions we could ask:
- What have been your key achievements this year?
- How could you better yourself within your role?
- Has your manager assisted you when required?
- Could you benefit from additional support from your manager?
- Do you have any future goals?
- What parts of your role do you enjoy most?
- Could we do anything to improve your work life?
What are the basics of an appraisal?
An appraisal has 3 basic functions, these consist of:
- Allows managers to provide feedback to employees on how they are performing within their job role.
- Helps employees to develop and improve themselves to become more efficient and productive.
- Gives managers the necessary knowledge needed to make proactive decisions regarding job assignments and more following on from the information obtained during the appraisal.