How To Conduct A Performance Appraisal

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Your employees thrive on feedback. Without feedback and constructive criticism, it’s difficult for them to know where they’re succeeding, where they can do better, and what their future at the company might look like. That’s why performance appraisals are such an important tool to utilize in helping your employees thrive.

Whether your employee is performing well or underperforming, performance appraisals should be given the same time, thought, and energy, no matter the employee. This means you should take the time to be structured, ensure the meeting time is productive, and provide helpful feedback for your employee to take action.

Key Takeaways

• A performance appraisal is a regular review of an individual employee’s performance within the company.

• The purpose of a performance appraisal is to arm your employees with high-level feedback on their work.

• Appraisals provide actionable feedback on job performance and ensure employees and managers are on the same page and working towards the right goals.

What Is a Performance Appraisal?

A performance appraisal is a regular review of an individual employee’s performance within the company. This term is interchangeable with annual review, performance review, performance evaluation, or employee appraisal. The goal of the performance appraisal is to provide an evaluation of the employee’s skills, achievements, and growth.

The purpose of a performance appraisal is to arm your employees with high-level feedback on their work. It can be used as leverage for pay increases and bonuses, as well as performance plans or termination decisions. Just like a performance review, performance appraisals should be conducted on a regular basis, whether that be annually, quarterly, or monthly.

How Do Performance Appraisals Work?

Typically implemented by the human resources (HR) department, performance appraisals are used as a tool to help employees develop further in their careers. These appraisals provide actionable feedback on job performance and ensure employees and managers are on the same page and working towards the right goals.

Performance appraisals can be used as leverage for both employees who are performing well and employees who are not performing well. Those who are eligible for raises and bonuses can use a performance appraisal to their benefit. For managers with an underperforming employee, a performance appraisal may call for a performance plan or termination.

Performance appraisals are also very important for an employee’s future development. This is an opportunity for employees and managers to sit down and develop a career development plan which can include increased responsibilities, training programs, certification classes, or other things that can help the employee grow.

However, the performance appraisal should not be the only time an employee and manager discuss an employee’s performance. Weekly one-to-one meetings should be a regular occurrence where the manager and employee touch base to ensure they’re on the same page and working towards the same goals.

Different Types of Performance Appraisals

Performance appraisals can look different depending on the leadership team, the company, and the industry in which you work. Most performance reviews are given by managers to their subordinates, but there are other types of performance appraisals to consider.

• Self-assessment. This performance appraisal requires the employee to evaluate their own performance and report this to their manager. This will help the manager understand if their employee understands their role and responsibilities and give some insight into what they’ve been working on if they don’t already know.

• Peer assessment. If your employees work on a large team, regular peer assessments can be incredibly helpful. This is a great format to ensure your employees are communicating with one another, as well as getting the support and resources they need to do their job well and be satisfied in their roles.

• Step-level assessment. It’s important that managers receive feedback as well. A step-level assessment is when an employee gives feedback on their manager to the individual who manages their manager. This is a great opportunity to give praise or constructive feedback for better management.

• 360 feedback assessment. The most common type of assessment after the typical performance appraisal is a 360 feedback assessment, where feedback is collected from the employee themselves, their supervisor, and their co-workers to provide a well-rounded picture of their current performance.

How to Conduct a Great Performance Appraisal

Given the importance of performance appraisals, you want to make sure you’re conducting them well. Performance appraisals are there to benefit both the manager and employee, but as the manager, it’s your responsibility to ensure the meeting is an effective use of both of your time.

To that end, it’s important to be prepared. Start by establishing a purpose for the performance appraisal beyond just discussing the employee’s performance. For example, are there any patterns in terms of challenges they’re facing? Could you help them develop in this area? If so, be sure to communicate this during the review.

You’ll also want to consider creating an agenda for this meeting to guide the time you have together and ensure you cover everything you intend to. It’s recommended to forward this to your employee before the appraisal begins so that they know what to expect or if they’d like to add any discussion points.

Be sure you’re being realistic in your evaluation. This means ensuring you and your employee are on the same page, such as understanding objectives and targets. Have you continuously mentioned these in the past? If so, it’s appropriate to review their progress towards these goals. If their goals haven’t been revisited lately, instead, try to establish new goals with them.

Arguably the most important part of the performance appraisal is to incorporate ideas for development and action. Look forward, not backward, when conducting the appraisal. How can they move forward to achieve the objectives and goals set before them? Be sure you listen to your employee about what plans they may have for their future, too.

Finally, work with your employee to agree on a plan of action moving forward. Managers and employees alike should walk away from a performance appraisal with an understanding of what needs to be accomplished. This should include deadlines and help your employee grow and develop in their career.

Performance Appraisal FAQ

1. What do you use performance appraisals for?

   Performance appraisals are used to evaluate an employee’s performance over a period of time. The results can highlight what they’re doing well and what they may need to improve on.

2. Why is a performance appraisal important?

   Performance appraisals are important because it helps managers understand if the employee is performing well or may need help improving their performance.

3. Who conducts performance appraisals?

   Traditionally, the employee’s supervisor conducts a performance appraisal. However, there are different types of appraisals that can be conducted by other members of an employee’s team.

Author

Caitlin Mazur

Caitlin Mazur is a freelance writer at Zippia where she has written 140+ articles that have reached over 1 mil viewers as of June 2023. Caitlin is passionate about helping Zippia’s readers land the jobs of their dreams by offering content that discusses job-seeking advice based on experience and extensive research.