Wonder what is a Performance Appraisal?

Contributing Author: Sean Lee | Consulting Director | InTalent Consulting |IPTER Malaysia

No matter the level of your company, it is mandatory to conduct performance appraisals with your employees, in order to have a clearer view of which of your employee is happy and which one is hardworking.

First of all, let’s start by addressing the terms “performance appraisal”. A performance appraisal, also known as employee appraisal or performance review, is a regular review of an employee’s performance and contribution in a company. It evaluates an employee’s skills, achievements, and growth or even areas of lacking. They can be conducted annually, semi-annually, or even quarterly.

Conducting performance appraisal in your company helps you determine which of your employees has contributed the most to company’s growth, which can also help you determine how to reward your employees according to their work rate.

It can also help you as a company and your managers create a plan for employee development through additional training and increased responsibilities as well as identifying employees’ shortcomings that could be resolved.

TYPES OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

There are quite a number of ways in which you can assess your employees; the most popular ones are discussed in this context, which includes:

1. Self Assessment: This is a type of appraisal in which your employees are allowed to rate their job performances and behavior. Typically, prior to meeting with an employee, the manager (or the person conducting the appraisal) will ask the employee to complete an evaluation form on their own.
2. Peer Assessment: This is a type of appraisal where your employee is assessed by the people they interact with in the working environment or in the company.
3. 360 degree feedback assessment: This is when the employee is assessed by their supervisors and peers and allows for input from the employee who is being evaluated.

Things that should and shouldn’t be done during or after Performance Appraisals

• Appraisals can be carried out by the managers, supervisors or even third party HR firms, that being said, there are some things that should be abstained from while carrying out employee appraisals on employees.
• Performance appraisals that work well on one job might not suit the other; therefore, do not use the same appraisal format for different sectors and departments.
• Do not be bias, giving an underperforming staff a good review will lead to failure in addressing weakness and problems of the employee which will affect the company’s production power.
• In order to please their employers or avoid losing their jobs, employees tend to alter and tailor their inputs and fail to address any issues. Therefore, as a manager, or a company, do not address the employees evaluation results with anger, rather, listen to what they have to say, improve on suggested areas, this way employee retention will not be a problem.
• Last but not the least, take and treat the reviews and evaluation of your employees seriously.

We at inTalent Consulting strongly want to develop people and by using this tool to appraise them, we can gauge and inform the employees where the gaps exist for them to improve and regularly celebrate others success.

PEOPLE MATTER MOST.