Pros and Cons of Performance Appraisals
Performance appraisals should provide an accurate assessment of performance during the covered period. Effective appraisals highlight successes and detail specific areas where employees can improve, providing fresh objectives for the next performance period. Despite the advantages, many managers view the appraisal process as a nightmare and delay the writing and delivery. If managers wait a full year to consider and evaluate their employee’s performance, the task is easily derailed and very difficult to do.
You yourself might have had a bad appraisal experience. Maybe you had a manager that delayed your appraisal months or even years. Sometimes, salary increases or promotion opportunities are tied into the process and they become delayed as well.
Early in my career, I had a boss and mentor who wrote and delivered wonderful appraisals. He taught me to keep a file for each employee and provide monthly feedback so the annual appraisal held no surprise. He found it easy to write his appraisals, and he always made sure to provide a specific example for each statement.
Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of this complex process:
Pros
1. An excellent opportunity for employees to understand how they stand within the organization as well as how the organization views their commitment and contributions.
2. A perfect occasion to establish and set goals for the future.
3. A chance to motivate employees by detailing their contributions, identifying and recommending areas for future growth and opportunity, and evaluating how they could strengthen their value to the department and organization.
4. A favorable time to discuss how the employee views their role in the organization and how they would like to further grow and contribute; what new or additional responsibilities they would like to assume.
Cons
1. Managers who procrastinate and delay the process, turning what should be a positive experience into a negative one.
2. Documents poorly prepared and vague, reflecting managers who don’t take the time to truly identify and document an employee’s performance and contributions.
3. Statements that appear more as an opinion rather than true assessment, often happening when managers wait a full year and find it difficult to remember the specifics of individual performance.
4. Managers that just aren’t trained to evaluate effectively and find themselves uncomfortable in the role and fear they are acting like a judge.
If an organization uses an annual appraisal system, it’s in the manger’s best interest to utilize the tool. When records of individual and group performance are regularly documented, the appraisal process is simplified and it becomes a powerful motivator in the manager’s toolkit.
The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this web site do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of AuditNet®