I HATE PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS!: TIPS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR EMPLOYERS & EMPLOYEES

Everyone hates performance appraisals. Also known as performance reviews, these are the periodic assessments of an employee's job performance and overall contributions within a company and, while valuable, nobody really looks forward to them.

In this blog, veteran Toronto HR consultant Christine Fowler in Toronto provides the following tips:

• Why performance appraisals are important
• The 2 performance appraisal fears
• How to prepare for the meeting as an employee
• How to prepare the meeting as an employer
• How do you appraise an employee?
• What to do if emotions run high

Why Performance Management Is Important In HR

“Poor feedback practices are a major driver of high employee attrition rates”.

That was the conclusion of a recent report published in Forbes 500 analyzed 2 cycles of performance reviews of 13,000 workers. And it’s not just doing performance appraisals, it’s doing them well. People who received “unactionable feedback” during their performance reviews were significantly less likely to be in the organization a year later.

In other words: If you don’t invest in growing your people, they leave.

3 Reasons Why Employees Fear Performance Appraisals

1. Fear of the Unknown: What’s the true purpose? The process? The evaluation criteria? A process that is clear, warm & fuzzy will get better results.
2. Fear of Failure: This stems from concerns about whether the emphasis will be on what isn't working rather than acknowledging and highlighting what is working.
3. Fear of Feedback: For many employees, appraisal time feels like being in the hot seat – where you and your performance are the topic of discussion. Feedback, good or bad, can be as uncomfortable to receive as it is to give. 

4 Ways Prepare For a Performance Review as an Employee

1. Review your Job Description: Reflect on your achievements and how they relate to your responsibilities in your job description. Have you taken on additional responsibilities throughout the year? Has the scope of your job changed?
2. Review the past year: Do your accomplishments align with the company's goals and values, complemented by positive feedback from colleagues and customers?
3. Revisit: Look back at the past and outline your overall performance highlights, challenges and milestones you incurred.
4. Write your Self-Assessment: Be honest when considering your overall performance. It’s much more effective in a performance review to bring constructive feedback and ideas to the table than it is to pretend failures didn’t happen.

3 Steps to Prepare for Performance Review Meetings as an Employer

1. Assemble the Data:
2. Document employee accomplishments, timelines, challenges, objectives, and multi-rater feedback.
3. Follow this by reviewing the self-assessment and composing the manager's evaluation.
4. Finally, select the time and venue for the performance appraisal meeting. (Leave an hour.)
5. Check Your Biases and Errors: Be aware of biases and errors that can give employees an unfair advantage or disadvantage over others:
6. Personal Bias: The manager rates the employee based on the Manager’s feelings towards the employee – good or bad!
7. Similar to Me Bias: Inclination to give a higher rating to people with similar interests, skills, and backgrounds as the person doing the rating.
8. Recency Error: The employee's most recent behaviour becomes the primary focus of the review- good or bad!
9. Horn Effect: When a single negative attribute causes a manager to rate everything on the low end of a scale.