Question

Many people (including senior management personnel) are sometimes uncomfortable in the appraisal process. If you have had responsibility for evaluating and appraising other employees in your workplace describe how you approached these responsibilities. Were you comfortable with the process? From the appraiser's point of view, what could have been done to make the process better? What did you do to make the process better for the employees you were appraising?

Answer 1

When I had the responsibility for evaluating and appraising other employees in my workplace, I have approached my responsibilities with care and tried to ensure fairness to all. I was not comfortable with the process because our organization followed a rating scale method where the supervisors rate the employees from 1 to 5 based on the performance for the whole year. I explained the job responsibilities along with the goals and objectives for that year with all the members in the beginning of the year. I do not have close interaction with all of them and hence performance evaluation was very difficult for me. I could not find the specific reason for performance lag in certain members while analyzing the performance for the whole year. I found it very difficult to avoid biases as I know about only few people’s performance and the appraisal is done solely based on my perception and the data.

In my opinion, the appraisal can be made better by using a method like 360 degree feedback which uses the feedback from people with whom the employee interacts during work like customer, colleagues, etc. When we take feedback from those who work around them, we can find the strengths and weaknesses of each employee better and rate them correctly. The process can be made better also by evaluating the performance monthly or quarterly so that we would have more clarity on the areas of improvement. I tried to make the process better for the employees I were appraising by taking feedback from the other members about each employee performance and by discussing with each member to identify the challenges they faced in the job.