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The newest steps and strategies to enhance the performance appraisals you provide
Performance Appraisals & Phrases For Dummies shows you how to apply the latest performance appraisal practices and generate positive outcomes for your employees, for your company, and for you. The days of stand-alone annual performance appraisals are drawing to a close, with today’s appraisals utilizing quarterly or biannual sessions, continuous feedback with regular two-way communication, collaborative goal-setting, career development, and an ongoing forward focus. This approach includes tools to provide impactful feedback and feedforward, recognize and support employee success, avoid the common mistakes related to performance appraisals, and build your coaching skills.
By applying the newest steps in performance appraisals, you will literally and figuratively be in an excellent position to build your employees’ skills, motivation, performance, satisfaction, and commitment.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part 1: Getting Started with Performance Appraisals
Chapter 1: Building Success with Performance Appraisals
Laying the Foundation
Successfully Navigating through the Appraisal Process
Using Effective Phrases
Chapter 2: What Performance Appraisals Do for You and Your Team
Appraising Annual Appraisals
Utilizing More Frequent Appraisals
Utilizing Continuous Feedback
Harnessing the Motivational Power of Appraisals
Aiding Administration
Part 2: Working Your Way through the Process
Chapter 3: Pre-Appraisal Preparation
Building a Constructive Mindset
Playing the “What If?” Game
Handling the Logistics
Final Steps to Make the Process Work
Chapter 4: Leading a Productive Appraisal Session
Preventing the Most Common Mistakes
Setting the Stage for the Appraisal
Holding the Meeting
Part 3: Phrases and Expressions That Work
Chapter 5: The Best Phrases for Attitude
Accepting Assignments
Agility
Attendance
Can-Do Attitude
Dedication and Commitment
Emphasizing Safety
Energy
Engagement
Flexibility
Focus
Following Company Policies and Procedures
Going the Extra Mile
Handling Pressure and Stress
Initiative
Level of Supervision Required
Reliability and Dependability
Understanding and Supporting Company Values and Mission
Volunteering
Chapter 6: The Best Phrases for Collaboration, Communication, and Interpersonal Skills
Collaboration
Cooperation
Customer Service
Listening
Meetings
Negotiating
Persuasiveness
Sales Skills
Teamwork
Telephone Skills
Written and Verbal Communication
Chapter 7: The Best Phrases for Creative Thinking
Applying Innovative Thinking to Company Policies and Procedures
Brainstorming
Embracing Change
Encouraging and Supporting Innovation from Others
Generating New Ideas
Problem Solving
Receptiveness to New Ideas
Seeking Improvements
Thinking Outside the Box
Chapter 8: The Best Phrases for Ethics
Diversity and Inclusion
Fairness
Giving Back to the Community
Health and Wellness
Honesty
Integrity
Judgment
Maintaining Professionalism
Sustainability
Chapter 9: The Best Phrases for Job Knowledge and Expertise
Acting as a Positive Role Model
Applying Expertise to the Job
Conducting Research
Demonstrating Computer Literacy
Mentoring Others
Sharing Knowledge
Supporting Technology
Utilizing Analytical Skills
Chapter 10: The Best Phrases for Leadership
Building a Team
Coaching
Delegating
Developing Employees’ Skills
Inspiring Enthusiasm and Commitment
Making Decisions
Managing Conflict
Motivating Employees
Proactive Behaviors
Providing Feedback
Recognizing Excellent Performance
Screening and Hiring
Chapter 11: The Best Phrases for Planning, Administration, and Organization
Adjusting to Change
Applying Managerial Skills
Bottom-Line Orientation
Controlling Costs
Establishing Goals
Meeting Deadlines
Organizing
Planning
Setting and Adhering to Schedules
Chapter 12: The Best Phrases for Quality and Quantity of Work
Accuracy
Detail-Mindedness
Meeting Goals
Multitasking
Performance Levels
Productivity
Setting Priorities
Time Management
Working Remotely
Chapter 13: The Best Phrases for Self-Development and Growth
Adding Value
Building Problem-Solving Skills
Capitalizing on Opportunities to Learn
Engaging in Career Planning
Enhancing Expertise
Participating in Training and Upskilling
Pursuing Development Goals
Responding to Performance Appraisals and Coaching
Part 4: The Part of Tens
Chapter 14: The Top Ten Words to Include in a Performance Appraisal
Achievement
Advancement
Career
Engagement
Ethics
Goals
Growth
Leadership
Reliability
Strengths
Chapter 15: The Top Ten Behaviors Meriting Special Recognition
Acting Honestly
Collaborating with Others
Communicating Effectively
Exceeding Goals
Going the Extra Mile
Handling Work with Agility
Maintaining a Genuinely Positive Attitude
Pursuing Upskilling
Solving Problems
Thinking Creatively
Index
About the Author
Advertisement Page
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
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Copyright
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About the Author
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Performance Appraisals & Phrases For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
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In the past, many managers and their employees experienced significant levels of dissatisfaction and distress regarding performance appraisals. They often dreaded the appraisal sessions and questioned the value of the entire process. Fortunately, the performance appraisal process has undergone several major changes, and it’s now a far more positive and productive experience for all of the participants.
These changes are thoroughly discussed in this book. They include continuous feedback, replacing annual appraisals with quarterly or biannual appraisals, focusing on employee growth and career development as well as performance improvement, all while maintaining open two-way communication at every point. This framework also includes jointly establishing performance goals as well as development goals, along with specific action plans that monitor progress and goal attainment. Today’s performance appraisals have a strong forward-focus, and they incorporate managerial coaching as a central component of the process.
In light of these changes, performance appraisals are now more open and transparent, which leads to appraisal sessions that are two-way conversations and free of the angst, stress, and dissatisfaction that were hallmarks of such sessions in the past. Today’s appraisals include constructive performance-based feedback that aligns with the information provided through continuous feedback during a given evaluation period, which eliminates any surprises during the appraisal sessions. In addition, these sessions include actual discussions that focus on plans, strategies, support, and coaching to improve performance, enhance employee learning and growth, strengthen career development, and build employee motivation, satisfaction, engagement, commitment, and productivity.
I wrote this new edition to update the performance appraisal process and facilitate each step that is associated with it. Every chapter stands on its own, and you can read any that may be of particular interest to you and obtain practical information that you can immediately apply, while leaving other chapters for a later read.
If any specific aspect of performance appraisals is high on your list right now, you can easily go to the chapter that deals with it. For example, if you’re interested in how to productively lead an appraisal session, there’s a chapter on this exact topic. And the same applies if you’re interested in knowing more about the widespread benefits of performance appraisals, building success with performance appraisals, or preparing for performance appraisal sessions — along with several other topics that are central to this process.
In addition, if you’re interested in seeing the newest and best phrases to use in the appraisal process, you’ll most likely be able to find some that work for you in nine separate chapters of phrases, more than 3,300 in all, followed by two chapters that deal with the top ten words to include and the top ten behaviors to recognize in this process.
As I wrote this book, I made a number of assumptions about you:
You’re responsible for appraising employees.
I assume that you’re in a supervisory or managerial position, and that one of your responsibilities is to appraise the performance of each of your employees.
You’d like to avoid the problems and issues that typically accompany performance appraisals.
At this point, you’re seeking new, user-friendly, and productive ways to provide highly effective feedback and coaching for your employees.
You want to build your effectiveness in carrying out performance appraisals.
Whether you’re new to management or you’re an experienced manager or supervisor, I assume that you would like to enhance your knowledge, proficiency, and skills in order to conduct performance appraisals that truly build productivity, contribute to employee development, and align with company goals.
If at least one of these assumptions sounds like you, then you’ve come to the right place.
Throughout this book, I use four different icons to highlight different points. Here’s what they mean:
I use the Remember icon to emphasize a point for you to keep in mind whenever you’re conducting appraisals.
The Tip icon highlights particularly effective ways for you to carry out various performance appraisal steps.
The Technical Stuff icon flags information that focuses on various technical points associated with the appraisal process. These points can be easily skimmed without missing the major issues.
When you see the Warning icon, it’s a good idea to take heed. This icon identifies common mistakes or problems that can develop if key points are overlooked or if incorrect actions are taken.
In addition to what you’re reading right now, this book also comes with a free, access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that discusses the most effective words and terms to use in appraisals and how best to conduct an appraisal session, including how to prepare for one and how to follow it up. To view the Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and type Performance Appraisals and Phrases For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.
In addition, three bonus chapters dealing with the types of performance appraisal feedback, gathering and analyzing performance data, and following up appraisal sessions are available online. They can be found at www.dummies.com/go/PerformanceAppraisals&PhrasesFD.
Whether you’re new to the process of performance appraisals or an experienced manager, the best way to proceed with this book is to start with Chapter 1, as the entire process has changed significantly. Chapter 1 provides you with an overview of the newest developments, along with key steps that you can implement right now to facilitate and enhance the performance appraisal process. This chapter also sets the stage for you to proceed with the chapters that follow.
At the same time, if you’re interested in specific components of the performance appraisal process, there are chapters, headings, and subheadings that will take you wherever you want to go. In addition, if you’re looking for phrases that are focused on your employees’ levels of proficiency and effectiveness across a vast array of their work and related behaviors, you’re likely to find them among more than 3,300 phrases in Chapters 5 through 13. If you’re not sure where to go, the Table of Contents and the Index will point you in the right direction.
Part 1
IN THIS PART …
Rethink annual performance appraisals and the problems they cause.
Take advantage of the numerous benefits associated with biannual or quarterly appraisals.
Upgrade the entire appraisal process with continuous feedback.
Bring two-way communication, collaboration, and a forward-focus into performance appraisals.
Capitalize on the motivational powers of effective performance appraisals.
Chapter 1
IN THIS CHAPTER
Facilitating and strengthening the performance appraisal process from start to finish
Generating positive, measurable results with state-of-the-art performance appraisals
Enhancing employee development and productivity through the performance appraisal process
Many managers still see the performance appraisal process as an administrative rite that consumes a lot of time while producing little more than frustration, confrontation, and a loss of valuable time. This reaction is totally understandable if you’re relying on a performance appraisal system and related practices that are out of alignment with today’s approach to performance management.
As I explain in this book, the performance appraisal process can play a remarkably powerful role in developing your employees and enhancing their performance and productivity — when it’s done right.
In the past, a key source of the problems associated with the performance appraisal process has been the outmoded strategy in which managers treat appraisals as an isolated, annual set of steps that are separate and distinct from all other managerial responsibilities. Fast-forward to today and you’ll find that performance appraisals can be highly useful and productive when they are part of your ongoing managerial functions on a year-round basis.
As a manager, a key part of your role is to maintain regular and frequent contact with your employees, whether remote, onsite, or a combination of the two, and to provide them with regular coaching, guidance, and feedback. These steps are key components of what is called performance management. As part of the performance management process, there used to be a specific time — typically once a year — when managers would gather performance data on their employees, analyze it, document it, and then provide employees with specific feedback. This piece of the performance management process is the performance appraisal.
However, this process has undergone some major changes, which have led to far more positive and productive outcomes for employees, managers, and organizations. The first major change is that the notion of once-a-year annual appraisals has dramatically changed. Because of the dissatisfaction noted above regarding the annual process, some companies have eliminated formal annual appraisals altogether. However, it turns out that taking this step is often an overreaction, because employees still want performance-related feedback and guidance. The more widely accepted approach now is to provide more frequent performance appraisals, such as twice a year or on a quarterly basis. At the same time, even for companies that still use annual appraisals, one key fact is clear: For these sessions to generate positive outcomes, they cannot be held in a vacuum.
Hence, a related development that has significantly enhanced the performance appraisal process is a practice called continuous feedback. This component of performance management calls on managers to meet regularly with employees, typically on a scheduled basis as frequently as once a week. These collaborative sessions focus on employee performance, status of goal attainment, professional growth and career development, health and wellness, new initiatives, and any questions or issues that may need attention.
In the past, managers typically viewed performance appraisal not only as an isolated annual event, but also as a feedback session focused primarily on evaluation and documentation of past events. Although both of these have a place in the process, today’s performance appraisals can do much more, especially by focusing more on the employees’ future goals and achievements. When collaborative sessions are conducted more frequently and supported by continuous feedback, they are likely to generate a significantly broader range of positive outcomes, especially in terms of the following:
Motivating employees
Improving performance and productivity
Increasing satisfaction and engagement
Establishing, updating, and tracking goals and career paths
Aiding overall administration
In order to take full advantage of the wide range of measurable benefits associated with the newest approaches to performance appraisals, it’s best to start with a few foundational steps.
Annual performance appraisals have often been found to generate significant levels of dissatisfaction and distress for managers and employees alike. For managers, they tend to be seen as a yearly interruption of questionable value. They are typically regarded as angst-inducing rituals based on events and behaviors throughout a given year, often taxing the memory while consuming hours of valuable time. When the planned feedback is less than positive, there tends to be a related increase in managers’ anxiety and stress levels. The anticipation of forthcoming disagreements, arguments, or conflicts, which is not exactly uplifting for managers, often results in grade inflation, namely the practice of awarding high scores in order to avoid confrontation.
At the same time, employees who are about to receive their annual performance appraisals tend to experience a combination of fear, anxiety, and nervousness, especially if there was a problematic incident that occurred close to the date of the performance appraisal session. In many cases, employees believe that they’re not being fairly or accurately evaluated on the basis of their performance during the entire year, but rather are likely to receive feedback that is skewed as a result of more recent events. In addition, employees today are interested in receiving coaching, guidance, and advice to further their professional growth and career development, and this need is largely left unmet in annual appraisals.
Increasing the number of formal performance appraisals from once to twice a year or even quarterly offers numerous advantages to managers, employees, and the organization at large. In the first place, more frequent appraisal sessions allow the organization to tailor the process to its key cycles. For organizations that conduct quarterly financial analysis and reporting, aligning employee appraisals in accordance with this timeframe provides a logical and timely basis for this employee feedback. At the same time, for organizations that are more project oriented, more frequent performance appraisals can be aligned with the timing of other key benchmarks that are central to company operations during a given year.
More frequent performance appraisals also provide an opportunity to place the employees’ goals in a more realistic timeframe. Although some goals can be a year-long pursuit, others can be pursued and met in a shorter period of time. More frequent performance appraisals provide employees with better opportunities to receive formal feedback and guidance on their goals while the achievement of those goals is still fresh in mind.
It's also important to recognize that many employees, especially Millennials (born 1981–1996) and Gen Z (born 1997–2012), are highly interested in sensing that their employer is truly committed to their growth, development, and career advancement. When employees are formally appraised quarterly or at least twice a year, they are more likely to sense this type of commitment from their managers and to thereby feel more valued, respected, satisfied, and energized.
These employees are not only highly interested in feedback, but they are also interested in feedforward: instruction and advice on the specific steps they can take to attain goals, improve performance, enhance growth, and guide their careers. More frequent formal performance appraisal sessions provide a meaningful and collaborative opportunity to address these interests.
Within this framework, an annual performance appraisal can still be provided at year-end, but it should not exist in isolation. Rather, if multiple appraisals are conducted during a given year, the year-end evaluation should encapsulate the formal feedback that was previously provided at the end of each evaluation period during that year. Handled in this way, the annual review is likely to be more accurate, useful, and forward-looking. However, to take the process to a higher and more productive level, a key element is the inclusion of continuous feedback.
Continuous feedback is the managerial practice of providing regular feedback, feedforward, guidance, and coaching to individual employees on a regular basis, typically once a week or once every two weeks. These sessions can be held onsite or remotely, and they are not agenda-driven. Rather, these sessions provide an open forum to discuss topics of importance to each employee, the team, the department, and the organization at large. Premised on collaboration and two-way communication between managers and their employees on virtually any topic at work, the process of continuous feedback can include discussions that focus on an employee’s progress and performance, concerns and suggestions, metrics associated with goals, adjustments of existing goals, frameworks for new goals, health and wellness, career coaching, and defining and refining additional steps for upskilling and career advancement.
Providing continuous feedback also helps meet the previously noted needs of many employees that are focused on receiving honest and accurate feedback and feeling that they are respected and valued by their manager and the organization at large. These employees want to sense that the company truly cares about them and seeks to partner with them as they move forward on their career path.
At the same time, continuous feedback has also been found to be directly related to a number of positive outcomes, including improved performance, higher levels of employee satisfaction, and greater levels of engagement. This type of feedback also further strengthens the working relationship between managers and their employees, hence reinforcing the levels of trust and support that are so important to employees today.
All these topics and more are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2.
Many people think that the only source of feedback during the appraisal process is the manager. Although the manager’s role in the process is central and essential, the quality and effectiveness of the entire process is significantly upgraded when two additional sources are included. These two sources — self-evaluations and 360-degree feedback — provide information and insight that lead to the continuation of excellent performance and improvement of subpar performance.
By including self-evaluations in the performance appraisal process, there is an increased opportunity for employees to generate a clearer picture of their past performance, as well as to further clarify their performance goals, development goals, and the near-term and longer-term steps required to meet them. In addition, it is quite revealing for employees to highlight the areas in which they feel positively about their performance, while simultaneously receiving feedback from their managers that can include recognition as well as suggestions for improvements. At the same time, it is equally important — and oftentimes uplifting — for employees to learn that some of the aspects of their own performance they regard as subpar are described and reviewed more favorably by their managers.
Another key component in gathering accurate and current performance-related information comes from 360-degree feedback, especially in terms of feedback from a given employee’s peers and direct reports. This feedback provides an even wider perspective of the employee’s performance and behaviors, thereby adding increased credibility, acceptability, and usability to the overall appraisal process.
When conducting performance appraisals, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the various methods you can utilize to provide performance feedback. This is particularly compelling information for each employee, not only because it is individually tailored to their performance, but also because it is directly related to the ways in which employees learn. Namely, there is an auditory aspect of learning that comes from discussing performance, along with a kinesthetic and visual aspect of learning that comes from providing each employee with a tangible and readable document regarding their performance.
As a result, it’s quite useful to look at the main types of evaluation methods, along with the pros and cons of each. Taking this step helps you design and define the feedback that you are providing, while also enabling you to generate content that is more likely to be relevant and meaningful to each of your employees.
Some of today’s most frequently used evaluation methods include:
Essays
Graphic rating scales
Checklists
Forced choice
Management by objectives
These appraisal options plus several more, along with hands-on information regarding the use of additional sources of feedback, are discussed in Bonus Chapter 1, “The Types of Performance Appraisal Feedback.”
With this foundation in place, there are various preparatory steps that help set the stage for highly effective and productive performance appraisals, especially within the framework of multiple appraisal sessions and continuous feedback.
As your employees’ manager, you play the central role in the performance appraisal process. You’re the primary source of feedback regarding their performance, productivity, goal attainment, and overall actions on the job. It can be easy for managers to fall into a role that is closer to inspector or even disciplinarian when carrying out performance appraisals.
However, the entire process of performance appraisals will be significantly enhanced if you instead envision yourself as a coach. You’ll certainly want to provide accurate, fair, timely, and useful feedback to each member of your team, but a coach does more than that. With this expanded mindset and orientation, your role in performance appraisals is focused on working collaboratively with each of your employees to develop areas in which their skills or performance were not up to par, guide their development, and jointly establish rewarding and fulfilling strategies that will help take their work and their careers to the next level.
At the same time, a key element of effective coaching is effective planning. For your appraisal sessions to generate the kinds of positive and productive outcomes you’re seeking, some advance planning is essential. By approaching the logistics of these sessions within the framework of coaching, such as by including your employees in the planning side of these sessions, you increase employees’ anticipation, involvement, and receptiveness.
On the one hand, the more you understand your employees as individuals, the more you’ll be able to create positive and productive performance appraisal sessions. At the same time, even though a coaching approach to performance management will help you gain this insight, it is equally important to have a high degree of self-insight and personal understanding. Such insight plays a central role in the appraisal process. Some of the key formational steps include the following, all of which are discussed in more detail in Chapter 3:
Take a careful and honest look at yourself as a manager and coach.
Step back and look at the expectations that you’ve established for each of your employees and at the evaluation process itself.
Carefully consider the feedback that you’ve received regarding your managerial style and interactions with members of your team.
Delve inward and try to identify any fear or hesitation you may be harboring because of past negative experiences linked to performance appraisals.
By applying specific strategies to build your self-awareness, self-insight, and empathy, you greatly enhance your ability to understand your employees as well as your skills to appraise their performance and guide them toward future performance enhancement, growth, and development. By increasing your self-insight, you’ll also be increasing your confidence and effectiveness in these sessions — and simultaneously reducing your own hesitation and anxiety.
For your feedback to have relevance and a lasting impact, it must be based on specific examples of employee performance. This type of information cannot be gleaned through quick and intermittent visits with your employees, nor is it accessible at the last minute.
Accurate appraisals require a real understanding of your employees’ performance throughout the evaluation period, regardless of whether that period is one year, six months, or three months. In addition to data that you gather from self-evaluations and 360-degree feedback, you can generate current and useful performance-related information through direct one-on-one contact with your individual employees on a regular basis, onsite or remotely, through continuous feedback.
Essential performance data is generated by regularly communicating and collaborating with each employee, obtaining current and direct information regarding a given employee’s performance and goal attainment, and by having ongoing discussions premised on feedback and feedforward. This approach clarifies and fortifies performance, upskilling, and growth on a continuous basis. At the same time, this type of interaction removes the unknown elements, surprises, and disagreements that typically have undermined so many performance appraisal sessions.
In addition to the approaches noted above, you can further enhance the quality, reliability, accuracy, and acceptability of your performance appraisals by familiarizing yourself upfront with other important pieces of job-related data. This includes a look at each employee’s files, job description, prior appraisals, and any notes you’ve taken along the way. Additional performance-related data can also be generated and reviewed by using systems available through today’s performance management software.
Marginal data gathering leads to useless feedback, which leads to employee resistance, dissatisfaction, and distress.
After you’ve reviewed all the performance data from a variety of sources, the next step is to complete the evaluation form. These forms vary from one company to another, but some overarching tips can help you handle this step more easily and effectively. These tips include evaluating your best employees first, entering your written comments before the numerical ratings, and considering how your employees will feel when they read your comments.
Fortunately, if you provide your employees continuous feedback as well as more than one formal performance appraisal per year, many of the classical issues and problems associated with preparing evaluations cease to exist.
Your comments in the written appraisals will generate resistance if they’re invalid, inaccurate, unsubstantiated, out of date, or focused on personality instead of performance.
I’ve included links to several companies that offer performance management software and apps in Bonus Chapter 2, “Gathering and Reviewing Performance Data.”
After you’ve completed the individual evaluation forms with ratings that are based on current direct observations of your employees’ performance, behaviors, goal attainment, and results during a given evaluation period, you’re ready for face-to-face performance appraisal sessions.
Because you’re providing your employees with feedback, coaching, and guidance throughout the evaluation period, your employees already have a clear understanding of how they’ve been performing on the job, and this means that you have all but eliminated the likelihood of resistance or defensiveness during this meeting. After all, these sessions are premised on two-way communication from start to finish. With this foundation in place, you’ll be in an excellent position literally and figuratively to provide highly impactful feedback and feedforward.
Some of the key steps that will help make these meetings even more successful include:
Identifying the key takeaways
Jointly establishing the agenda
Bringing relevant performance data
Focusing on maintaining a dialogue
As you engage in the appraisal discussion with each employee, you can enhance the dialogue by opening the conversation positively, providing constructive feedback, reviewing goal attainment and future objectives, jointly analyzing critical incidents, honestly and candidly discussing strengths and areas needing improvement, setting the framework for additional growth and development, openly reviewing the various ratings, and properly concluding the sessions.
As you navigate through the performance appraisal process and meet with each of your employees, note that all of your best efforts can be undermined by some common and easily preventable missteps. These types of errors contribute to the angst, frustration, and dissatisfaction that can accompany performance appraisals for managers as well as employees. Fortunately, these potential problems can be easily identified and preemptively avoided. Some of the most productive strategies to eliminate these disruptive issues include:
Accurately weighing recent events
Removing bias and stereotypes
Blocking the halo and horns effects
Avoiding skewed ratings
Presenting facts rather than generalizations
There are also some common communication-related blockages that can easily disrupt and derail these sessions. Some of the most common sources of such blockages include labeling, mentioning other employees, getting defensive, and arguing. Along these lines, such behaviors as bargaining, talking too much, postponing sessions, and providing feedback that surprises your employees should also be avoided.
In Chapter 4, I cover all of the steps associated with effectively leading performance appraisal sessions, as well as identifying and avoiding the most common mistakes that can easily derail them.
Although some managers believe that the appraisal process ends when the performance appraisal session ends, the reality is that the end of the appraisal session is simply another step in the performance management process that includes ongoing contact and two-way communication, feedback, and feedforward with your employees. When the formal appraisal session has been completed, additional follow-up steps keep the process moving.
One central area that calls for such follow-up is centered upon the employees’ goals. Depending upon an organization’s operations and the nature of the work, projects, and business cycles, some prefer to include goal-setting during the individual performance appraisal sessions, whereas others focus these sessions on current goal attainment and drafting an overall framework for forthcoming goals. With the latter approach, the strategy is to set up a future meeting that will focus specifically on jointly establishing new goals.
Either way, as a result of the feedback and feedforward that you have provided to your employees in the performance appraisal sessions and throughout a given evaluation period, you and each of your employees will have plenty of data to use in jointly developing goals for the newest evaluation period and beyond, depending on the nature of the goals themselves.
For goals to be motivational and generate measurable value and productive results, they must be composed of more than general hopes, wishes, and visions, no matter how well-intentioned. To be meaningful, effective, and productive goals, goals must be clear, specific, prioritized, challenging, measurable, and supported by timelines, deadlines, and action plans. At the same time, your employees’ goals should align with departmental and company goals with a clear focus on enhancing each employee’s performance, productivity, and development.
Within this framework, I define two types of goals:
Performance goals: These goals focus on each employee’s productivity, output, results, and the workplace behaviors associated with carrying out job responsibilities and pursuing objectives.
Development goals: These focus on enhancing each employee’s effectiveness and personal growth through objectives that are centered on upskilling, training, and progress on their career path.
With these goals in place, your next step is to continue to maintain ongoing and open communications with your employees, such as through regular — if not continuous — feedback. Maintaining this level of contact clearly increases the likelihood that the employees’ goals will be met or exceeded, while potential problems or glitches along the way can be managed. This contact also leads to increased agility when it comes to unforeseen circumstances that call for adjustments to existing goals or the creation of new ones.
With performance appraisals functioning as but one component in the performance management process, a cycle is developed. First, you and your employees jointly establish and agree upon specific performance and development goals. After this has been completed and finalized, you provide ongoing coaching, feedback, and feedforward throughout the evaluation period. As a result, when the time for performance appraisals arrives, both you and your employees know exactly how they’ve been doing. This means that you should have no difficulty creating the evaluation or conducting the face-to-face sessions, and your employees should have no difficulty understanding and accepting the feedback and working further with you to correct any existing performance problems as well as reaching and even exceeding the newest set of goals. After you’ve completed a given performance appraisal session, this goal-setting process starts anew.
Also, in terms of follow-up, the entire process is supported and enhanced through informal feedback. These unscheduled visits, whether in-person or virtual, provide excellent opportunities to learn more about how things are going for each employee. This type of contact further strengthens the relationship between employees and their managers.
However, as part of the follow-up process, there may be times when an employee needs more than coaching to improve performance. In such cases, a performance improvement plan (PIP) can be quite helpful, especially when provided in a supportive and constructive context with language that is more developmental than critical. With a solid and collaborative relationship between the manager and the employee already in place, the information that an employee receives in a PIP is more likely to resonate and positively impact future behavior. In most cases, PIPs also include a timeline related to the performance that warrants improvement. This timeline can specify a reevaluation meeting within 60 to 90 days, or it can indicate that employment will be terminated if the noted improvement or improvements are not made within the specified time period. In this latter situation, the PIP also serves as the final written warning.
Also on a follow-up basis, a growing number of organizations are removing raises from the performance appraisal process. It has been found that linking raises with performance appraisals has generated distraction and a misguided focus during the appraisal session, along with decreased cooperation and collaboration and increased dissatisfaction. As a result, many organizations are now separating raises from performance appraisals, a step that has generated increased objectivity in their overall compensation plans. In this framework, discussions about raises are typically held in a separate session with each employee.
You’ll find a detailed discussion regarding goal-setting, PIP plans, and managing going forward in Bonus Chapter 3, “Following-Up.”
Your written comments in the performance appraisal process offer an excellent opportunity to present compelling, long-lasting, and motivational feedback and feedforward to your employees. To do so, the phrases you use must be specifically designed to energize your employees to continue and even surpass their excellent performance, while simultaneously helping them to understand and upgrade their questionable performance.
The best way to reach this objective is to identify the key areas of performance and then provide impactful phrases that target the full range of employee behaviors. Chapters 5 through 13 provide more than 3,300 such phrases.
With a state-of-the-art performance appraisal system in place, supported by continuous feedback and backed up by specifically designed phrases to use in this process, you’re in an excellent position to build employee engagement, satisfaction, agility, collaboration, and communication while simultaneously enhancing the performance, productivity, growth, and development of your employees, your department, and your company.
In addition, Chapters 14 and 15 respectively, I discuss the top ten words to include in performance appraisals and the top ten behaviors that merit special recognition.
Chapter 2
IN THIS CHAPTER
Unlocking the motivational impact of today’s performance appraisals supported by continuous feedback
Enhancing performance, engagement, professional growth, and career development through the appraisal process
Generating key administrative data to proactively protect and strengthen the organization
Performance appraisals have the potential to generate numerous measurably positive outcomes for individual employees as well as for their managers, departments, and the company at large. After all, there’s no question that employees need feedback to learn, grow, and improve their performance, and those are just a few of the key positive outcomes that can emanate from effective performance appraisals. However, a problem occurs in companies that are still relying on annual performance appraisals with intermittent informal feedback at best. This is a common practice that generates distress, dissatisfaction, resistance, and demotivation for both employees and their managers.
In order to benefit from these myriad positive outcomes, the first step is to take a look at the well-entrenched process of annual appraisals, identify the issues and problems, and present some positive and productive solutions to help these appraisals reach their potential. In other words, annual performance appraisals need to be appraised. That’s what this chapter is all about, followed by information regarding the many ways that today’s approach to performance appraisals can help you, your employees, and your company.
If you were to sit down to evaluate the performance of an employee named “Annual Performance Appraisals,” it would not be surprising to find that your evaluation ironically includes the comment, “needs improvement.” Although annual appraisals can be somewhat improved when accompanied by informal feedback along the way, the lack of formality and regularity accompanying such feedback tends to make those appraisals’ impact rather negligible. The most common overall perception is that annual appraisals are isolated time-consuming corporate rituals that reappear at the end of each year and inadvertently foster an aura of organizational negativity that is practically palpable.
When there are organizational issues that generate dissatisfaction across numerous departments and impacting employees at all levels, the typical response of management is to dig deeper into whatever may be causing the problem and then set the wheels in motion to make some changes. It does not take much digging to determine why annual appraisals are causing so much trouble.
The problems associated with annual appraisals are widely sensed by employees and their managers, and they are generated by such issues as the following:
Delayed reinforcement:
For learning to occur, it’s important for feedback to be provided close to the behaviors in question. This point is totally missed in annual appraisals, with employees conceivably being provided with feedback on their performance long after they engaged in the evaluated behaviors. With this type of delay, the likelihood of an employee internalizing and applying new skills in the future is significantly diminished. In addition, without timely constructive feedback, your employees’ mistakes may well be repeated.
Biased by recent events:
In addition to delaying recognition or constructive feedback on a timely basis, a related problem with annual appraisals is that recent events are more likely to influence the rating that an employee receives. This outcome is particularly problematic when an employee has performed in stellar fashion throughout the evaluation period, only to have a problematic incident right before the performance appraisal session. The manager might not remember much about the employee’s terrific work during the year, because much of it has become a blur, but that recent misstep is not going to be forgotten. This is extraordinarily unfair to the employee, and it’s likely to create a problematic exchange during the appraisal session, followed by negative feelings experienced by the manager as well as the employee.
Lack of agility:
Agility, namely the flexibility and adaptability associated with adjusting to today’s dynamic world of work, is basically missing when annual appraisals are in play. By stretching out feedback over the course of a year, there can be changes, adjustments, upgrades, and adaptations that employees could and would have made in real time if they had been given timely feedback. With such feedback being provided at the end of the year, employees are likely to continue to handle a given project in a mode that is outdated, unnecessary, or counter-productive — or perhaps the entire project has become irrelevant, thereby wasting time, energy, and money while generating frustration and dissatisfaction.
Focused exclusively on the past: