Performance Appraisal
Still spending way too much time and money on long performance appraisals? Now is a good time to appraise your appraisal process and make sure you've got the best system to serve you and your employees. These days research shows employees want more than just monetary rewards.
What Employees Value
Study after study is finding employees need clearly established expectations, consistent, meaningful feedback, timely recognition for accomplishments clear understanding of next steps to facilitate their individual career development.
Up front communication sets the stage for fair and effective employee performance assessments down the road. To keep important ideas top of mind, these up-front expectations can be discussed with an employee at appropriate intervals, repeated in ongoing feedback, and solidified again in the formal annual or semi-annual performance appraisal. They shouldn't come as a surprise at evaluation time.
Many companies are having success providing clear, meaningful feedback as part of their performance management and development process using 360 degree survey tools. Recent studies have found 360 degree feedback to be a valuable addition to the performance improvement process.
Visit our Education Center to for free videos and articles about how to use 360 feedback most effectively.
Also, studies show that when employees receive regular performance appraisals either yearly or semi-annually, rather than randomly or worse, hardly ever -- the anticipated feedback - appraisal - improvement loop is more familiar to employees and performance appraisal becomes increasingly effective.
Effective Performance Appraisal
An effective performance appraisal system produces improved individual performance and enhanced employee engagement. For the business it means more each employee gives his or her best and the company reaps the benefit.
Use Great Questions
Effective performance appraisal reviews are fueled by great questions. Knowing what to ask and how to ask it makes all the difference. Getting the questions right is tough, even for the pro's. When the question are unclear the results can be disastrous and demonstrated in this news story:
Don't guess on the quality of your questions. Let us help you at no charge. Our proprietary Question Clarity Check™ can quality check the questions you've already written and takes difficulty out of crafting new questions. This simple tool runs each question through a 7 point quality check and scores the quality of each questions.
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Call us at (888) 467-8575 and we'll run your questions through our proprietary Question Clarity Check™ at no charge or obligation. It's risk free.
Great Valid appraisal and survey questions are key to great performance appraisals. Here's just a few tips on how to craft questions that work:
- Refrain from using overly generalized questions combined with one-dimensional ratings that refer only to global performance (poor, fair, good excellent)
- Don't rely on trait-based or personality framed questions, or those that require the rater to guess at the ratee's motives or beliefs.
- Avoid assessing performance based on objectives that are out of the employee's control. (ie where the employee's efforts may or may not have a direct impact on outcomes).
Instead:
- Focus on observable behaviors that can be seen, heard, experienced, and then rated.
- Ask questions that are specific and readily measurable against a variety of scales. (ie. how often, how much, how important)
- Limit the scope of each question to one, clearly stated idea. A question that tries to include multiple behaviors, measures or outcomes confuses the rater, which results in muddy data.
Include 360 Feedback In Performance Appraisals
Employees benefit from clear, feedback from not only their managers, but from their coworkers, their direct reports, their customers, and others who can offer relevant information about their leadership skills.
360 degree surveys are being used more often in performance appraisals. For years, professionals felt that 360 surveys were suited for employee development but not performance appraisals. However, recent research is finding that 360 surveys play a valid and important role in effective performance appraisals.
360 degree feedback is a process that collects specific feedback from coworkers, direct report, manager(s) and the employee then analyzed the results to show differences in perception of performance. The process sounds daunting but, by using a proven 360 vendor, can be easy and affordable to implement
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What can a great performance appraisal process do for your organization?
Get Measurable Results
Performance appraisals, when done well:
- Motivate your workforce by clarifying the work-related skills needed and competencies expected for success.
- Link these key skills to department and organization goals.
- Increase understanding as to how what employees do contributes to the organization's strategic goals and overall direction.
- Foster employee-management alignment and unity of purpose facilitate organizational growth and progress
How can you get the best possible outcomes from your performance assessment process for your employees and for your company? Using 360 feedback in an employee's overall performance appraisal is a good place to start.
Here's what the experts say:
Decide up front how your company to use 360 degree surveys in the appraisal. Will this feedback be used for employee development only? Will 360 results be tied to pay and promotions? Choose once and for all, then stick to your decision.
Communicate up front how the feedback ties into the performance apprasial. Let your employees know whether the data will be used for leadership development only, or for performance evaluation, or both, if that's the case. Changing your mind mid-stream will undercut the integrity of your appraisal process and lessen trust between employees and management. Again, pick a plan and stick to it.
Focus on relevant tasks and task performance. Be sure your appraisal and survey questions deal with the skills, competencies and objectives related to the job, not with abstract issues relating to an employee's personality or self concept. Effective appraisal questions reflect the work, not the worker.
Use survey technology that's so easy and robust it enhances the appraisal experience. Technology should never steal the focus of a performance appraisal process. Unfortunately, systems that are difficult to use or don't properly protect data can derail any performance management process with the click of a mouse.
Read what our clients say about the STAR360feedback system.
What Makes a Successful Performance Appraisal Discussion
Always begin with respect. When it's time for the employee to receive the feedback report, don't just dump and run. The discussion needs to be held between the right people, the employee and his/her supervisor. At a time that allows for ample discussion in a non pressured setting. Don't hold the discussion just before the day ends, that only adds pressure to be done quickly.
Start the appraisal discussion by setting the context of past performance. Have the employee review his/her goals and accomplishments for the past year, followed by the supervisors perception on the same issues. Next, set the current context by reviewing the results of the 360 survey together, looking for strengths, development opportunities and significant differences in perception. Finally end the appraisal discussion by looking to the future:
Set Formal Goals. Be sure you don't overlook formalizing next steps for feedback recipients. Goal-setting increases the effectiveness of any feedback intervention. (DeNisi and Kluger Feb, 2000)
Goals need to be specific, measurable and time bound but also need some flexibility as circumstances change. Establishing good goals is similar to writing great questions. Use our Question Clarity Check™ to evaluate some of your goals to learn how to insure your goals are on target.
Provide Resources for Development. Whether you have internal or external coaches and mentors in place, or your employees are given a list of resources they can access and use self study, be sure to give your employees opportunities well-thought-out paths to success.Tie Development to Organizational Objectives. For maximum ROI on the investment you've made in performance appraisal and employee training and development, make a strong connection between follow-on employee development activities and the organization's key goals and priorities.
Create a personal development plan summarizing the discussion.
Encourage employees to begin implementing their learning as soon the apprasial discussion is over and it will:
- Cement for each employee the insights gained in the appraisal process and
- Accelerate the benefits back to the company as employees improve their performance and impact others positively.
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Individual Development Plan
Many successful companies help employees combine the feedback, survey results and information from the performance discussion into one performance appraisal document called an individual development plan. The plan includes the employee's goals, timetable and resources needed for the employee to succeed. The document provides the employee's manager with a tool to facilitate future discussions, track progress and help the employee maintain focus. The process is simple, but not necessarily easy. It takes planning, a lot of it so that all the pieces fit together, and support each other individually and collectively.
Some 360 survey vendors can build Individual Development Plans and other performance appraisal forms into the 360 feedback report and even populate fields automatically, based on the employees survey results. STAR360feedback has a robust
process that enables them to include the full performance appraisal in the 360 feedback report, making it simple to keep all the relevant information together.
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Performance appraisals are essential to sound organizational understanding and solid business strategy.
Tighten up your performance appraisal process.
Performance appraisal is the process of identifying, measuring and developing human performance in organizations. As with any process, the mechanics can get in the way and prevent you from achieving your objectives. When organizations include a 360 survey as part of the performance appraisal process people can put so much effort into the development of survey questions, they loose sight of the implementation details that can make or break it's process. Here are key issues to consider:
Who's involved? — Who:
- Will receive feedback.
- Has had had enough interaction with participants to give relevant feedback?
- Will oversee the project and make sure it runs smoothly?
- Will see the results in the appraisal process and help the employee formulate a development plan?
What do you need to know? — What:
- Key competencies do you wish measure and do these competencies match your company's mission, core values, objectives?
- Specific skills and behaviors that support those key competencies?
- Open ended questions should you ask?
How will the results be used?
Be clear on what you intend to do with the results. Use in pay and performance appraisal reviews? Use only for employee development? Both?
Communicate to your employees how you will use the results in the appraisal process so they are informed, valued partners in the process as well.
Seasoned professionals can help you work through these, and a other issues in creating an effective performance review process. There is no need to repeat the mistakes that others make. A professional cannot only help you avoid mistakes, s/he can help you plan for and achieve success.
Call one of our seasoned professionals today at (888) 467-8575.
Get the most value for your money
When feedback from others is a key part of a performance appraisal process, the value of the feedback is achieved through a clear, easy to understand, comprehensive feedback report. Employees can quickly identify issues, set goals and understand what to do next. Use our 12 point Report Comparison Tool to compare report elements that many vendors don't consider but that can make the difference between a good report and an exceptional report.
A report that's confusing or requires time to understand prevents employees from seeing important issues and turns employees off toward the entire performance appraisal process. Some companies invest a great deal of time and money to put a performance appraisal process in place, only to have it flounder because people can't understand the reports they receive.
As you develop your performance appraisal process, review reports from many vendors. Talk to the vendors about the flexibility of their report. Make sure that the vendor you chose gives you the report you want. Don't settle for having to take their report as is. You should be able to have the calculations and formatting you want, to have the analysis you want and to have your individual development form, as you designed it, included in the report. The vendor should deliver a report that fits your company, culture and objectives. You should not have to force fit your process to the vendors report. Take the time to review reports from several vendors.
Do not skimp on your report. Get the best. Send us the feedback report you use in your performance appraisal process and we'll conduct a free report analysis that goes beyond the report comparison tool offered on our website. There's no obligation or cost.
Using a feedback report to make a positive performance difference.
360 feedback is an analysis of others perceptions, which may or may not be accurate. However, perceptions are reality for those that hold those perceptions. Many performance issues arise because of differences in perception, not differences in fact. A good 360 feedback report will include gap analysis that highlights differences in perception. Where differences occur, performance struggles and conflict arise.
Research shows that the best appraisal processes include a conversation between a supervisor or coach, and the employee receiving feedback to help him/her interpret results. The feedback report should be the foundation for the discussion and the conversation should examine the participant's strengths, development opportunities from the perspective of each group of people that provided feedback. Many times, once the gaps are highlighted and there is an honest effort to discuss why the gaps exist, next steps for the participants will become clear in the course of the discussion. Using data and a clear report can remove much of the emotion from the discussion and make the experience positive.
We've collected and reported performance feedback for over 2.5 million people! We're research effective appraisal processes and have the experience to you create an exceptional performance appraisal process.
Call us at (888) 467-8575 for specific tips on how to hold effective, positive appraisal discussions.
There you have it.
Performance appraisals are indispensable for vibrant companies who wish to keep their workforce engaged, focused and actively improving their performance. 360 feedback is a great tool to collect relevant feedback from a variety of sources that gives participants a more comprehensive picture of their present skill sets and suggests ways to improve them.
We have years of experience and a toolbox of proven tools to help your performance appraisal process excel. Many of our tools are free, with no obligation or expectation that you do business with us. We'll let you use our tools, share our experience and help you succeed.
Call us today and discuss your performance appraisal project or visit www.STAR360feedback.com
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