A performance appraisal also referred as performance review is a method to evaluate employees’ performance to understand the abilities for further growth and development. There are some objectives of performance appraisal, such as: provide feedback for employees’ performance, identify strength and weakness of the employees, and maintain records to determine benefit and wage structure.
Furthermore, doing performance appraisal gives advantage for manager to frame the right training for employees’ development and plan on compensation or promotion. Performance appraisal also serves as a motivation tool for the better job and improved performance because it shows the employees’ efficiency and working performance.
However, doing a performance appraisal is not easy, isn’t it?
If you are an HR person, you’re might be quick to point out that the most stressful part of performance appraisal is the document management – how to store and track the paper documents. The manual process of paper-based performance management demand you to swim on the piles of paper to find the documents, chasing employees to fill the form before the deadline, and make sure that the right documents are on the right manager’s table. It is, indeed, messy, time-consuming, and costly.
Moreover, some companies that do a yearly performance review to provide a reliable feedback for their employees might find it awkward at times to tell the staff that they aren’t doing a good job. It’s not easy to offer a more constructive feedback without leaving a condescending impression, and not everyone has the ability to do so. Fail to do it right would only make it ineffective.
How to make performance appraisal more effective for your company?
To make it less awkward, company should let the employees to take the ownership of the process. Meaning, let the employee to asses him or herself, then manager can go through another appraisal to see whether both sides agree on the employee’ performance. This way, employees can better understand the company’s expectation and what they’re doing well or what they may need to work on for a better performance.
Performance appraisal is better done continuously, not only on yearly basis. When you only conduct a yearly review, the result might not be accurate enough to cover the employees’ performance for the past year, because they might only remember the past week or month of their works. However, it will be complicated to deal with such administration work too often.
To achieve an effective performance appraisal, companies can use HR automation system. The automated performance appraisal system let you to create online assessment, for the needed time basis. Be it weekly, monthly, or quarterly, the assessment can be done continuously without the hassle of working with piles of paper.
You don’t need to chase employees to fill the review form because the system will do the reminder for you and make sure that manager can monitor whoever complete the review, then take a decision based on the result accurately. The HR digital system stores assessment records in an accessible cloud system. It enables you to pull up the data you need quickly and easily. The assessment record is accessible anytime to help you develop your employees based on the appraisal result.
Using a reliable HR system to do performance appraisal will benefit you because it’s not only digitise the process, but also makes it more efficient as it’s less painful but serves you a better result. Our HRM system is ready to help you achieving a more efficient performance appraisal, and in long term, achieving the best of your employees’ performance. Contact us and find out how we do it!