How much prep for an appraisal by manager/employee?

[Warthoggy]

I'm senior in a small company. I haven't been there that long but I'm looking to make changes to the appraisal process. There's no HR function.

At the moment, the onus is on the employee to do an awful lot of prep work and the manager to do none. The areas covered focus too much on business needs and not personal objectives and development, IMO.

Whenever I've worked previously there has been a requirement for prep and input by the manager, and I've always taken time to prepare in advance to make the meeting as useful as possible for the employee as well as the business - completing the paperwork and getting feedback from others where relevant. Isn't that normal? I've worked in a lot of companies and it's been standard. I've never come across a process where the manager does nothing.

My proposals are being met with resistance as I think it suits other managers very well not to have to put any time in. AIBU? As it's a small company, no one has to do more than a handful of appraisals so it's not a huge task to do things properly.

Bump

As I manager I expect my team to bring some evidence of what they have been doing, how they think they are performing etc , are they meeting their objectives etc. I usually ask for this in advance of the meeting.

I do prep but generally I know the answers to these questions but it's always interesting to put the onus on them & have them look at their objectives, think about what they are doing & how they do it.

Sorry - so in my world the onus is on the employee to do more prep - I guess because I know how they are performing generally.

If I have it wrong and they turn up with a load of evidence about the amazing things they have done then great!

I obviously prepare the paperwork & write stiff up after.

What is the expected outcome? Have you got pay rises to give out?

If not, then do everyone a favour and scrap the whole pointless HR job invention.

As an employee I do very little prep. Maybe half an hour listing what I've done / learnt. I'm fairly sure my boss doesn't do much either. Most of the time is spent in the actual appraisal, which is probably only about an hour. I think that's right to be fair, when I was in the public sector people spent days preparing for it which was ridiculous and affected the performance of their team.

I used to work for a very large blue chip company and it was generally expected that the employee would spend a lot of time preparing a list of work they’d done over the year along with examples of how they had met the company key points.

However, all this was irrelevant as the manager would have already been told what score they had to give you for your appraisal and that was what they would give you, regardless of your examples.

In my last year there, I had gone all out producing a list of my work, examples of stuff, amazing feedback from other people and they let me sit there and go through it then told me I had done a terrible job, I was a poor performer and if I didn’t improve I’d be sacked. When I said but what about my feedback and all these projects, they just said that that wasn’t their impression.

The bottom line is that appraisals are not about you telling your managers what you’ve done, it’s about your company using your managers to communicate whether you can expect to stay employed and why you won’t get a pay rise this year.

Of course employees should have to prepare, but the current process takes a minimum of 2 hours of prep each quarter and the prep isn't really related to the whole job role and is more about productivity than anything. These are customer facing roles, so productivity is only a small part of being a successful employee. Also, the company structure and processes mean that managers don't even work particularly closely with staff. Where no feedback is sought from people who work with them on a daily basis, it feels like the sole purpose is for staff to prove their worth.

One example is that it turned out there was a recurrent issue with one member of staff. It was never mentioned to their manager and so never noted as an area where support was required in order to allow that person to develop. That person's appraisal was just based on the staff member's self analysis of productivity and success with a manager who didn't work with them on a daily basis and where there was no requirement to obtain constructive feedback. It just seems rather pointless.

There's no benefit to the employee. The subject of development doesn't come into it. It's probably why there's a higher staff turnover than I would expect.

Where I work it's about 50:50.

Staff do a self review and set out what objective they think they should have / would like to focus on. They submit this to their managers.

Then managers do a review containing specific feedback and any comments on objectives to discuss. They pass this to the staff before the meeting so they have time to read and think about it.

Both elements are discussed in the meeting and then final objectives are agreed between staff and manager.

I think just asking staff to review themselves without any external feedback is a pointless exercise, but self-reviews have value if part of a bigger process that includes third party feedback. I can see why people get frustrated with the approach you've described.

Our review process includes 360 degree feedback. So managers must get feedback from their staff, and staff must get feedback from their peers.

The onus is in the employee to complete the paperwork but the point of the review is the discussion on the previous six months - what went well, what could have gone better, what development for next six months. The manager must know the employee for this to work through regular catch ups, and it's absolutely not the time to bring up performance concerns!

We do (usually) score but I've only once been in a position where my opinion differed to the employee and a lot of it came down to the employee's expectations which should have been addressed through the HR training.

I think ensuring you give your employee proper time and attention is key. That's not necessarily a stack of paperwork for you until after the appraisal.

• prompts as to what they should be preparing
• seeking insights from customers / clients / any feedback surveys

If it's not there already, any review has to be built on clear foundations. Not sure if that's what you are referring to but I've worked in places where I've been expected to complete masses of questions about my performance which have been a nonsense because I haven't had / agreed clear objectives from the outset.
So I'd make sure those are in place and are clearly measurable.
So many people are in manager roles and in fact they haven't a clue about managing people. Sounds like you're trying to make a good change, best of luck.

At my large co, we expect the colleague to do 75% of the talking. Training was forever ago, but I recall that the manager should lead and direct by asking questions.
What was hammered home was that there should be nothing new in appraisals. No surprises. If there was new news, then the manager has been failing to conduct 1-2-1s through the year properly.

Quarterly appraisals? It's a bit much I think. My workplace has quarterly check-ins in the 1st year or employment and then annual appraisal. And 100% as per pp if you have nothing (no bonus, parish, perks, opportunities) to reward people with, scrap the whole thing.

Sorry for typos! Payrise not parish