6 Ways to Make Performance Appraisal More Effective

How do you know if your employees are more engaged and satisfied with their jobs than they were a year ago? Can you determine how a recent round of layoffs has affected morale?

Performance appraisal is a good way to take the pulse of your work force. Some companies do an annual appraisal, while others poll their workers after a major change, such as a merger or restructuring. But how do you know what's right for your business? HR World spoke with experts to learn the best tips for implementing appraisal and making sure they are real catalysts for improvement.

Know Why You're Doing It

Executives like numbers, so one reason many companies take appraisal is to quantify the strengths and weaknesses of the organization.
Appraisal can also be helpful after a big change. If the company has just merged with a competitor, are workers anxious about their new roles? Additionally, appraisal can shed light on unexpected issues. Some employees were very proud of their work, but expressed in the appraisal that they often had a difficult time determining who had the authority to make decisions.

Make Changes - Carefully

It can be helpful to modify the appraisal each year, adding specific questions based on employees' current concerns. It makes the appraisal a lot more relevant for the employees because now it's talking about issues that they care about.

Companies' former focus on how happy employees were, with questions about whether they liked their boss, is now shifting. Appraisal today is much more focused on productivity. Questions now ask if the company is too bureaucratic, or if employees feel they are given the authority they need.

But there can be too much of a good thing. It's not a good practice to change the appraisal dramatically each year. This will make the results less useful because they can't be compared with past data.

Get the Length Right

Most companies aim for a appraisal that employees can complete in less than 20 minutes, usually between 50 and 70 questions. A few businesses want them to be shorter, and aim for a 10-minute appraisal.

As long as the appraisal doesn't go too much over the 20-minute mark, the length is unlikely to be a problem. By and large, people really want to tell you their opinion. An employee doesn't mind spending 20 minutes out of a whole year telling you what they think.

Consider the Context

An employee appraisal will produce a wealth of numbers to analyze - and new insight into a company's strengths and weaknesses. But it's important to place the numbers in context.

If half your workers say they wish they were paid more, for example, does that mean you have a compensation problem, or are your workers simply expressing a typical desire for more money? This is where it can be helpful to compare your results with those of previous years, or even with industry-wide benchmarks.

You need to look at the results of the appraisal in tandem with other pieces of information. Has the company hired a lot of new workers recently? Is there a lot of uncertainty because of a pending reorganization? Get a more holistic view of what's going on with the organization.

Finally there is a very common tendency to focus on the negative to the exclusion of the strengths of the organization. Many managers simply skim the appraisal results looking for where the company or department did worst. But to see the whole picture, consider both positives and negatives.

Let Employees See the Appraisal in Action

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to do appraisal, receive the results and then do nothing. The appraisal should be a starting point, not an ending point.

If the appraisal shows surprising findings, follow up with employees to get more detail, perhaps in focus-group meetings. Be sure to go over the findings with employees, giving them an honest presentation of both the strengths and the weaknesses of the company.

Be ready to present initiatives to address findings that aren't so good. If employees see that the company acts on the appraisal results, they will be more willing to take the appraisal the next time around.

Not working to change the problem areas could do more harm than good. The best way to create skepticism in an organization is to ask someone for their opinion and then act in a way that suggests you didn't care enough to follow up.

By www.hrworld.com