Face to face. (performance appraisals)(includes related article)

Face to Face

Performance appraisals need not be ordeals. With a systematic approach, you can make them part of an effective management strategy. Do you and your staff stiffen at the thought of having to conduct annual performance reviews?

Why is it always so difficult?

Managers and supervisors too often emulate their own less-than-perfect managers, and the performance appraisal process becomes ineffective, ill-defined, or even counterproductive. But managers can learn to understand and use performance appraisal techniques that work, helping to ease the anxiety and avoidance that usually accompany performance reviews.

In every industry, employees are recruited, trained, evaluated, rotated, and promoted. In certain cases, they are terminated. But in many instances, performance appraisal is not even considered until an employee is placed on probation or in danger of being fired or laid off. Written and signed performance evaluations are virtually a legal requirement in almost every termination scenario.

As a result, many managers believe that written performance appraisals are done only because the personnel or human resources department requires them, and that informal, oral performance evaluations are actually a better way to review employees who are doing well.

Managers--people who are responsible for productivity, profit, and the employees who produce the profit--share responsibility for their employees' growth, professional maturation, and development into potential managers. When employees fail, managers fail; where the staff comes up short and underutilized, managers come up short and under-utilized. Managers must …