Performance appraisal- Part 1

90% of performance appraisal processes are inadequate.” – Salary.com survey.

In conversations with HR leaders and employees, the talent management process that suffers from the most disdain around the world is the performance appraisal. It’s one of the few processes that even the owners of the process dread.

If everyone hates it, but it still gets done nearly everywhere, you might assume some asinine government regulation requires it, but in this case there is no such regulation.

No matter how strong their design is, most performance appraisals are executed so poorly that they may actually harm a legal case.

Most ignore the shortcomings of performance appraisals and suffer through it.. Here are the Top 50 problems with performance appraisals (grouped into six categories)..

Performance appraisal – Part 2

The hallmark of a successful performance appraisal/performance development process is based less on the perfect program and more on a reflection of ownership, support and acceptance at all organizational levels. Sadly, this is not the case even in the most evolved systems we see today.

The traditional and widely subscribed top down, one-on-one evaluations have lost the spirit behind which the entire system/exercise was first based on.

There are several fallacies associated with the traditional performance management systems, be it the Balance Score Card or any other. These critically affect both the organization and the individual. One of the major fallacies being the “one-shoe-fits-all” approach! It’s unrealistic to place varied and often contradictory set of demands upon one system. Ultimately, key components get neglected or compromised and the process fails. It remains just another process. Do we truly expect this one all-purpose system to be the tool to establish performance goals, measure results, and determine compensation from salary administration to profit sharing? Can we, at the same time, count on it to be the primary instrument to point out an employee’s strengths and development opportunities, coach for improved performance, determine training and development needs, and be the basis of management succession planning?

It is essential that the status of both salary administration and developmental feedback be elevated and SEPARATED from the PMS so as to ensure that each receives the focused attention it deserves. In the existing system, these critical systems are confused and lost in the mire of the PMS.

1.4 Sadhana Soma Shekar, Joint Managing Director of Focus Infotech4 (a Software Company)