Appraisals- Old Wine in New Bottle!

Name two things that are consistent across races, geographies and industries. Could not guess, the answer is : the feeling of dissatisfaction post appraisals and the opinion/perception of appraisals : Time-consuming, Demotivating, Biased, and Unfair. Let us look at a few studies :McKinsey survey - CEOs don’t find the appraisal helping identifying the top performers, while over 50% of the employees believe that Line managers do the appraisals correctly. ; Gallup study - over 80% of employees felt demotivated with performance appraisals.

What this is does is create a negative attitude and thereby leading to what in textbook HR is called self fulfilling prophecy. Feedbacks are good or bad considering the compensation numbers and not the true unbiased feedback. Employees then see the “appraisal” as a tick mark fictional activity which has no linkage to the ground and the cycle of negativity creeps in. This is even more stark in cases wherein the target cycle is monthly, quarterly basis; these time frames encourages more fast food reviews( drive through, one size fits all types) and this is a difficult spiral to stop.

Now a lot of us will argue that when organization did away with appraisals and negated a lot Some firms have stopped performance ratings entirely. However with the good comes the bad and with the scrapping of ratings came the system of ghost evaluations: whether manager decides, team decides or any other way but something which could be translated into regular ratings. Meet the new boss, not better just new packaging.

Which got me thinking: What's the purpose of these reviews? for me, the top 2 are: an actionable empirical evaluation of performance, skill and role development conversation. From a perspective of being a receiver, Empirical feedback has both intrinsic plus extrinsic For recipients, feedback has intrinsic and extrinsic value. Helps us in identifying specific areas where we need to improve and then we have to practice and implement these skills to grow not just professionally but also in life experiences (hobbies, interests, family: the other things you do).

For the perspective of a manager/ mentor , the process of feedback is successful when you get all your employees to practice the right skills, behaviours, prioritize opportunities, and own accountabilities. The higher you rise in the ladder the better it is to invest in this as your performance is as good as your reportees.

In the next part of this, I will try to cover what to do, why to do and how to do this!

Thoughts and suggestions welcome!