Appraisals and Performance Management

Podcast Episode 206: Rethinking Appraisals

2nd October 2023

3,706 views

3 min read

This Episode: `Rethinking Appraisals`

Lucinda is back, and to kick off this new season of the show, she discusses the topic of rethinking appraisals, acknowledging that the traditional end-of-year appraisal process is often seen as backward-looking and outdated in today’s fast-paced work environment.

Lucinda proposes dividing the appraisal process into four defined touch points throughout the year: objective setting, development conversation, mid-year appraisal, and career conversation. By breaking it down into smaller, more meaningful conversations, she believes organisations can have better quality discussions, drive high performance, and increase employee engagement.

Key Takeaways

Four touch points: Lucinda proposes dividing the appraisal process into four touch points: end of year review/objective setting, end of quarter one development conversation, end of quarter two mid-year appraisal, and end of quarter three career conversation.
Clear purpose for each touch point: It is important to define the purpose of each touch point and communicate it clearly to managers and employees. This ensures that the conversations are focused and meaningful.
Training and upskilling: Managers should be provided with training and support for each touch point to ensure they have the necessary skills to conduct effective conversations and evaluations.
Benefits of rethinking appraisals: By breaking down the appraisal process and focusing on specific areas at different times throughout the year, organizations can improve the quality of conversations, drive higher performance, and increase employee engagement and retention.

Best Moments from `‘Time To Revisit Engagement`‘

“The concern with the end-of-year appraisal on its own is that people find it backward-looking. In this fast-moving climate, waiting 12 months to talk about someone’s performance seems too long.”

“If you tell a busy line manager to just go off and have continuous conversations, the easiest thing to do is to do nothing or very little.”

“The main thing is, it’s about thinking, what can I do to be successful? What we’re doing from the start is rather than old school, getting to the end of the year and you have a conversation about performance and then say, oh, what development would you like?”

“It’s completely unfair to wait until the end of the year to tell somebody that they’re not performing. You don’t want surprises at year-end, therefore you should absolutely be talking to somebody at the mid-year point.”

Valuable Resources

Find out more about actus

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About The Host

Lucinda Carney is a Business Psychologist with 15 years in Senior Corporate L&D roles. Lucinda also has a further 10 as CEO of Actus Software where she worked closely with HR colleagues helping them to solve the same challenges across a huge range of industries. Certainly, it was this breadth of experience that inspired Lucinda to set up the HR Uprising community to facilitate greater collaboration across HR professionals in different sectors, helping them to ‘rise up’ together.

“If you look up, you rise up”

How To Be A Change Superhero – by Lucinda Carney