Must Ban Appraisals

If John Lennon had to rewrite the lyrics of Imagine, my suggestion would be to start it as, "Imagine there's no appraisal..." He could write the rest of the lyrics but just imagine the delight so many employees around the world would experience if there are no forms to be filled that pass judgment on the year gone by.People worry about these things, you know. I don't know of a single human being who does not stress about rating their own annual heap of work. If they rate their performance lower than what the boss would have, they would have committed the corporate equivalent of suicide.If they rate their performance higher than the boss does, they risk getting deflated anyway. Not to mention the feeling of having provided the boss the opportunity to smirk silently as he evaluates how hard to guillotine your performance rating.The bosses do not like it either. You may think they love playing the hangman, but they don't. Most of them dread the discussion that follows - not to mention the drudgery of filling up elaborate forms that companies like to have. Instead of gratitude towards their manager for filling up these forms, the employees get battle-ready when they step in for a discussion.This is where it gets tough for a manager too. Having to disappoint someone by telling them that their performance was not good enough makes most managers squirm. So performance appraisals cause a lot of angst regardless of where someone is in the food chain.Recently, software maker Adobe created a stir by announcing that they were doing away with appraisals. The social media world was flooded with people dropping broad hints to their employers to follow suit. A lot of people view the appraisal as an evil ritual that needs to be exorcised.I believe that the form, the rating scale etc are the unimportant elements of the process that takes up most of the airtime. The only element of consequence is the appraiser's ability to differentiate shades of quality in the output and to use that data to help the appraisee improve.Many employees hate the process of differentiation based on performance. That is because we are often poor judges of our own performance. Research shows that an overwhelming majority of employees rate themselves as "above average" in skill and overrate their contributions. Since this is statistically impossible, it is not surprising that appraisals are disappointing for most people. Hence the skill of the person giving the feedback matters even more.Getting feedback about one's work is the biggest value one could get from the appraisal process. More frequent feedback has the ability to motivate an employee far more than an annual conversation. We all know that highly motivated individuals perform better. Many parents have the ability to help their children reinvent themselves after experiencing failure. A skilled manager's feedback can help turn failure into success.The popular game Angry Birds was the software maker Rovio's 52nd attempt. Failure can be the trigger for success.How energized and confident an appraisee feels after a discussion about performance is a direct reflection on the manager's skill. Ban the annual appraisal if you must - but only after all the people managers have learnt to have meaningful weekly conversations about performance with every team member. Would you trade places? Think about it.------------Read the original article written for The Economic Times <here>Appraisals are tough for bosses too! - The Times of India http://bit.ly/JzBcar