Don’t Miss the Most Important Part of Performance Appraisals

If you work in a company that has some form of formalized HR, you’re most likely in the middle of your performance appraisal process. In some parts of the world, performance appraisals are on their death bed. In these places the limelight focuses on communication – regular updates that guide employees to improve throughout the year rather than a single grade at the end of the year.

Whichever way you go, in my opinion, Asian companies (along with many other parts of the world) still need to heavily rely on performance appraisals. But by taking guidance from the changes occurring in the HR world they can take one key lesson away:

Conversations are the heart of successful performance appraisals.

Tips for Performance Appraisals Conversations

Communication is an art. If it wasn’t, there would be so many books, workshops, courses and degrees on the topic. As an HR professional, many of us pick up on the art of communication through years of experience. Perhaps one of the toughest conversations to have is for performance appraisal because they have to be conducted with a gentle yet firm hand. To have a conversation that gets the point across in a digestible manner, keep the following communication points in mind for your next performance appraisal:

1. Buffer the talk – start with positives, move onto points for improvement and end with positives.
2. Focus on goals achieved rather than time spent in the office. The former is much more important than the latter.
3. Bring each employee into the folds of the organization’s goals. Help them discover how they’re part of the bigger picture.
4. Ditch being formal. It really doesn’t help people open up.

How to Have Successful Performance Appraisals

Some ways to make sure you have a successful performance appraisal process this year are:

1. Build a relationship of trust with your team
2. Provide continuous feedback throughout the year
3. Involve and engage the employees being appraised
4. Focus on the core strengths required by the job
5. Use examples collected throughout the year to support the appraisal
6. Be specific on how employees can improve
7. Indicate how you as the boss can help improve employee performance
8. Focus more on the future of the employee rather than the past actions
9. Develop specific actions that the employee can take
10. Meet at a neutral place – a meeting room rather than your office
11. Focus on the quality of the conversation rather than the process of the form

Do you have any tips on how you make the performance appraisal process successful in your company? Share them below and sign up to the blog to keep receiving exclusive updates on the world of HR.

photo credit: Jinx! via photopin cc