If the annual appraisal made a noise, what would it sound like? It’s not an entirely flippant question. Ask the average worker and they would probably give you the same answer: something like a collective groan, which peaks around pay review season.
We all know why appraisals have a bad reputation. Line managers find themselves swamped with paperwork. Employees feel like they are back in the wrong seat at parents’ evening, trapped in a box-ticking exercise that seems disingenuous or simply negative.
In the worst case scenario, both sides are thinking: let’s just get this over and done with.
Given all the negativity, you won’t be surprised to hear that there has been much talk of killing off appraisals entirely. High-profile companies like Deloitte, Accenture and Microsoft have all made headlines in recent years by announcing plans to ditch their performance review systems.
But if that sounds like the end of the story, it isn’t. Quite the reverse. Because the truth is: appraisals are vital to every business, in the sense in which they involve purposeful discussion between manager and team member. The problem isn’t the Review per se. It’s how we approach it.
So what would a better version look like? In our view, an appraisal should be…
Focused
To be effective, a review needs to be genuine and meaningful. One good way of doing this is to set goals and challenges: but ones that are specific and achievable. What key objectives should your employee be working towards? How long should it take them to get there? Being clear and up front puts you both on the same page.
Ongoing
The problem with the annual review is that it attempts to shovel 12 months’ work into a single conversation. No wonder the conversation feels overwrought! Real dialogue happens continuously. But that doesn’t have to mean yet more work for the line manager. Short, informal meetings – something more like a regular, scheduled ‘catch-up’, where the manager makes notes to follow up later – are better than one laborious, every-box-ticked review.
Two-way
Another danger of the top-down appraisal is that it discourages effective feedback from staff. An employee fills out the form, sees their job as completed, then sits back to hear The Verdict. Having genuinely two-way conversations throughout the year gives the manager much greater insight into what’s going right and wrong ‘on the shop floor’. This in turn allows the business to be more agile.
Positive
Genuine, task-specific praise is more motivating than a long list of problems; appreciation is one of the most powerful (but underused ) mechanisms in the manager’s toolkit. Studies – like this excellent one from HR body the CIPD – suggest it’s better to focus on building on an employee’s strengths before trying to fix their weaknesses.
But if the yearly appraisal is Out, how many meets a year is In? That’s a tough one to call. It might be once a month or once a quarter. It might also look very different from one firm to another. Because, in truth, a really effective review system is one that is carefully tailored to the specific business – whether that business is an established multinational or an up-and-coming SME. That’s something we’re always very happy to help with here at HRS4B. When it comes to appraisals, we would argue that there really is no place for the one-size-fits-all approach. (And definitely no place for the collective groan.)
