We all know how it goes.. its the end of the year and the company needs to evaluate staff for possible salary increase or reviews for performance improvement plans. Even though, seasoned human resource experts opine that, to achieve effective performance appraisal, organisational goals ought to be clearly defined and understood by the entire workforce. Staff members can then define personal goals that align to the organisation’s end result. This creates a sense of involvement in the workplace, where expectations from staff are clear and there is enough room for personal development.
To build a cohesive workplace where the team members understand the strengths and weaknesses of each member and work towards a common organisation-wide goal, the stream of feedback needs to be uninterrupted. During this time, reporting managers are stressed trying to walk the tight rope, and not to upset the applecart. At the same time, they must differentiate rewards based on individual performance and risk dissatisfying some members of their team, while faced with a limited budget within which everyone’s expectations are to be accommodated.
Given this backdrop, is this a desirable exercise, if at all? Nonetheless, we need to acknowledge meritocracy, promote competition and reward excellence. There must be a better way of reviewing performance and rewarding merit based on accountability. For all its worth, performance appraisal ought not be a one-time annual season of intensive exercise wrongly conceived for ‘assessment interview’ where staff work endlessly trying to dress up the bride while operations almost grind to a halt.
Thankfully, Baraza HCM, Performance Management is one such tool that can facilitate personalisation and flow of activities right from defining key performance indicators (KPIs), competencies, and setting targets against the KPIs for the assessment of performance. In addition, it is very easy to report performance on an ongoing basis based on the frequency defined for individual staff KPIs, such as weekly, monthly, quarterly, bi-annually or annually. The reporting manager can give feedback with the same frequency in a sequentially rolling basis for each individual staff.
Unlike the olden days of annual performance appraisal, the new agile method allows for personalised periodic sprints. Spot awards can be given to staff for outstanding performance at any periodicity. Baraza HCM, Performance Management can rank performances and send automated triggers to staff sharing scorecards periodically. With this agility, appraisals do not have to happen at the same time for the organisation as a whole, which often builds an environment of heightened toxicity, gossip, and speculations. Rather, appraisals can happen on an ongoing basis anchored on the periodicity of the KPIs. Besides, all staff must not be appraised at the same time and season across the organisation.
With this level of automation, Human Resources team members have more time to facilitate developmental conversations between the employees and the management on topical issues including career plans, potential and future growth opportunities, a critical investment for an organisation to strengthen its ability to face uncertainties and continually transform.
The key to the success of this agile appraisal tool lies in the ability to define periods, KPIs, set targets, review when needed and drive personalised staff appraisals regularly.”