 |  |
| About Us | Apprenticeships | Contact Us | Corporate Training Courses |
|
Performance appraisals are essential for the effective management and evaluation of staff. Appraisals help develop individuals, improve organizational performance, and feed into business planning. Formal performance appraisals are generally conducted annually for all staff in the organization. Each staff member is appraised by their line manager. (Directors are appraised by the CEO, who is appraised by the chairman or company owners, depending on the size and structure of the organization). Annual performance appraisals enable management and monitoring of standards, agreeing expectations and objectives, and delegation of responsibilities and tasks. Staff performance appraisals also establish individual training needs and enable organizational training needs analysis and planning. Performance appraisals generally review each individual's performance against objectives and standards for the trading year, agreed at the previous appraisal meeting. They are also essential for career and succession planning. Performance appraisals are important for staff motivation, attitude and behaviour development, communicating organizational aims, and fostering positive relationships between management and staff. They provide a formal, recorded, regular review of an individual's performance, and a plan for future development. In short, performance and job appraisals are vital for managing the performance of people and organizations. When designing or planning and conducting appraisals, seek to help the 'whole-person' to grow in whatever direction they want, not just to identify obviously relevant work skills training. Increasingly, the best employers recognise that growing the 'whole person' promotes positive attitudes, advancement, motivation, and also develops lots of new skills that can be surprisingly relevant to working productively and effectively in any sort of organisation. If you are an employee and your employer has yet to embrace or even acknowledge these concepts, do them a favour at your own appraisal and suggest they look at these ideas, or maybe mention it at your exit interview prior to joining a better employer who cares about the people, not just the work. Are performance appraisals still beneficial and appropriate? It is sometimes fashionable in the 'modern age' to dismiss traditional processes such as performance appraisals as being irrelevant or unhelpful. Be very wary however if considering removing appraisals from your own organisational practices. It is likely that the critics of the appraisal process are the people who can't conduct them very well. Think about everything that performance appraisals can achieve and contribute to when they are properly managed, for example:
My advice is to hold on to and nurture these situations, and if you are under pressure to replace performance appraisals with some sort of (apparently) more efficient and cost effective methods, be very sure that you can safely cover all the aspects of performance and attitudinal development that a well-run performance appraisals system is naturally designed to achieve. There are various ways of conducting performance appraisals, and ideas change over time as to what are the most effective appraisals methods and systems. Some people advocate traditional appraisals and forms; others prefer 360-degree-type appraisals; others suggest using little more than a blank sheet of paper. For further help and guidance please contact me directly on 0870 803 1710 or email chrisash@e-volution-training.co.uk and I will be happy to call you back. |
|