4 Problems With Performance Appraisals: Where Do Managers Go Wrong?

Question: 4 Problems With Performance Appraisals: Where Do Managers Go Wrong?

Managers go wrong with performance appraisals in so many ways, it’s difficult to identify all of them. Here are four big problems managers and employees experience with performance appraisals.

Answer:

Performance Appraisals Are Annual

Start with the fact that performance appraisals are usually annual. Employees need feedback and goal planning much more frequently than annually. Employees need weekly, even daily, performance feedback to keep them focused on their most important goals, to provide them developmental coaching to help them increase their ability to contribute, and to recognize them for their contributions.

Managers, who don't know any better, make performance appraisals into a one-way lecture about how the employee did well this year and how the employee can improve. Once a manager tells an employee about problems with their work or a failure in their performance, employees tend to “not hear” anything else the manager has to say that is positive about their performance. So, it’s a combination problem. The best performance appraisals are a two-way discussion and focus on the employee assessing his or her own performance and setting his or her own goals for improvement.

Performance appraisals rarely focus on developing the employee’s skills and abilities with commitments from the organization about how they will be encouraged to develop their skills in areas of interest to the employee.

Performance appraisals are usually connected with the amount of pay raise an employee will receive. Don’t ever expect an honest discussion about improving performance if the outcome is the employee’s income. Let your employees know that raises will be based on a wide range of factors – and tell them what the factors are.