We get it, we are all human and can be swept away in a tide of emails that seem to stack up like a game of Tetris. But putting that date in your diary on a regular basis to discuss key issues and have performance appraisals with your team can be pivotal to the success of your department.
1. The Impact on Company Culture
By having regular appraisals, you are able to fully integrate a culture of open communication between management level and staff level. This will not happen if appraisals are few and far between. If you read our previous blog on employee engagement you will have read the importance of having the right company culture stemming from the top down. Appraisals are an effective way of ensuring this change.
2. Staff feel valued
Regular opportunities to voice their feelings about work gives staff a sense that their opinions are taken on board and that their input is valued. Not only that, an opportunity to discuss achievements allows your staff to show you what they have achieved and how much pride they have in the job they are doing. By giving staff accountability in their role, appraisals have more focus and have a more positive impact on staff development. As well as this, the opportunity to be not only praised, but given constructive feedback allows for awareness of where to improve for the following month.
3. You will find out who is/is not doing their job
Now, this point sounds very doom and gloom. However, what this does is give you a chance to get to the root cause of any issues. You will find out which staff are going above and beyond in their role and who do the bare minimum or even less. What is most important though is the opportunity to dig a little deeper than the data and find out why? Only through regular appraisals will you really understand the underlying reasons behind employees performance.
How often is enough?
Given you have built up the trust and transparency with your employees they should feel more than confident to raise any issues as and when they occur. However, this is not always the case and some may prefer to have a formal discussion to discuss any problems. Performance Appraisals need not be a laborious weekly occurrence that only succeeds in wasting valuable time in the working week, but quarterly is not enough. Why would you wait until the end of the quarter, see poor figures and then sit down with your team to discuss performance? If you have a monthly appraisal hopefully you foresee negative performance and put in steps to combat it.
