How Often Should Appraisals Take Place?

How can your team perform effectively at maximum capacity if there is a weak link holding the rest of the team back?

The well-known proverb, ‘A chain is only as strong as its weakest link’ takes on a literal meaning in the workplace when it comes to your employees.

When caught up with deadlines and ongoing meetings it may not be possible or even a priority for an employee to take a step back and consider how their job is going; are they performing well or are they dropping the ball on certain things, an appraisal can help monitor their individual job performance and improve it. It’s necessary for a company to make time to do this because it can closely affect the business’ success.

Firstly, what is an appraisal?

An appraisal in the workplace, otherwise known as a performance review, is the time to discuss your employees’ performance and development. Typically the appraisal will be a meeting with the employee and their line manager to discuss recent achievements, ongoing projects, future development and any rooms for in improvement. This will help maximise the role.

In the case of the employee, this is the ideal opportunity to propose and career development ideas, including training and any further support they may need.

All types of role, being it manual or office, management or freelancers should have this dedicated time to support their career path and experience better job satisfaction.

Things to consider

When it comes to the actual appraisal, there’s a few things to consider from both the individual and management side.

• Be prepared – it’s useful to bring a list of objectives or to agree an agenda prior to the meeting.
• Ensure it’s a good atmosphere – the meeting should be in a relaxed environment where a frank and friendly conversation can be had.
• Keep to a structure – this is where the pre-determined agenda comes in handy, use this as your structure and stick to it.
• Remain positive – management should express positive feedback and individuals should remain positive about their job.
• Agree measurable objectives and a future plan – the individual should come prepared with some future targets they would like and these can be discussed and formed into a set of goals.

Appraisals are a great way to track and monitor performance as well as prioritise development of an individual. It’s common for appraisals to take place twice a year, however, a recent trend has shown that reviews of performance are becoming shorter and more often, believed to lead to an improvement in performance, a report by HR.com showed 89% of HR professionals agreed with this. With MyBenefitsZone’s digital processes you can transform employee appraisals, providing regular and meaningful development notifications and assessments. Employees can engage and easily understand their development plan, options, and progress indicators. The HR dashboard allows full integration creating a paperless solution.

 For more information as to how MyBenefitsZone can help streamline your employee appraisals, get in touch.