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4 Questions For Effective Appraisals, effective appraisals, Evaluating employees every quarter instead of annually, Fauzia Kerai Khan, four questions to ask when appraising employees, ongoing feedback and coaching, replacing annual appraisals
Most employee performance reviews take place once a year and require managers to evaluate their subordinates on a battery of skills and their accomplishments from the preceding year. This practice is widely accepted as an essential and valuable tool throughout the business world.
However, the reality is that the traditional annual appraisals practised by a majority of organisations are fundamentally flawed. Research has shown that they are ineffective, unreliable and unsatisfactory and they can also be counterproductive. That is why leading organisations (including Accenture, Adobe, Deloitte and Microsoft) are replacing the annual evaluation cycle with ongoing feedback and coaching that focus on developing employees in the future given their current performance. This approach entails that at the end of every major project, or once a quarter (if employees have long-term assignments), managers or team leaders should answer the following four questions about their subordinates:
1. “Given what I know of this person’s performance, and if it were my money, would I award him/her the highest possible compensation increase and bonus?” This measures the employee’s overall performance and value to the organisation on a five-point scale ranging between ‘strongly agree’ (5) to ‘strongly disagree’ (1). Continue reading