Thursday 27 August 2015

It’s Time To Rethink The Annual Appraisal



Does your business run annual appraisals?  

If not, you might be feeling a bit guilty about it – after all, it’s a long-held wisdom that this is the best practice way to manage....

But things are changing, starting with the larger companies. 

Professional services giant Accenture announced recently that it’s scrapping annual appraisals, joining the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Gap and Expedia. Start-ups such as Google, Facebook and Netflix have bypassed them entirely.

Why?  The mood within many larger companies is that too often the annual appraisal had deteriorated into a ritualised, bureaucratic process, a distraction from the regular feedback conversations that managers should be having with their people.  It was hard to justify whether the time and effort involved really did improve performance management. All in all, the annual appraisal has been seen as just one of a number of processes encumbering organisations, without adding enough value.

Appraisals aren’t all bad. In a recent PwC survey, two-thirds of employees said they helped them understand how their performance shaped up and 48 per cent said they enabled them to think about their wider career. Where appraisals focus on coaching and not judging, people found them a useful way of knowing where they stand and letting them know periodically whether they’re on track.

Of course, those companies ditching annual appraisals aren’t abandoning performance management. Instead they intend to concentrate on developing practices that create a continuous feedback culture, with regular catch-ups concentrating on development.  By pointing out problems as they arise, employees have the opportunity to change their behaviour in a way that makes an immediate difference.  And because it happens in the here-and-now, continuous feedback is more likely to be honest and fair.

If you're a smaller company, what should you do?

Keep your eye on the bigger picturein the context of your particular business, where do you need to be developing people and where would improving individual performance make the biggest difference? And how: what's the best fit in terms of practices and processes
Start with broad principles that are sensitive to your people.  If you want your staff to achieve great things, you’ll have to ensure that you’re giving them the right kind of support.   So, what will enable them to do the best job that they can and give them the opportunity to develop?  
Do your managers have the skills and encouragement for regular connection, engagement and feedback conversations with their people?
Are you able to have deeper periodic discussions with your managers about their development and growth opportunities? – so that they’re supported in sharpening their skills and progressing with you.
Is yours a company where people can have honest conversations and feel comfortable speaking their minds? Or do your managers think their job is telling people what to do?

"The future has to be a lot less about control, and a lot more about enablement." -Peter Cheese, Chief Executive, CIPD

It may be time to update your approach, and consider how you can make performance management really work in your business.  Need a little help with getting off to a great start? Get in touch. Email enquiries@thehr.co.uk, tel 07884 475303.

We’d be happy to support you in improving performance within your organization – and we’re experts on creating traditional appraisal schemes tailored to your business!

Monday 24 August 2015

Keeping your people with you as the business grows


Once your business starts to evolve and grow, you’ll need to adapt your successful early approach.  As it transitions from a small, informal start up, what has worked to date will no longer be really effective for the business’s long term performance. 

So far, the company will have rested on your personality, your vision and values to guide where it’s going.  But as it becomes larger you won’t see people in person every day any more. Keeping that personal connection alive becomes difficult and you’ll need look to other people in the organisation to carry that mantle.  That's when the role of line managers becomes especially important.  

How do you maintain people’s connection and engagement with the original founding vision and values of the organisation?

How do your managers engage, inspire, motivate people in the same way that you did in the early days?

What could you put in place now to address some of those issues that are going to make your growth sustainable over time?

Looking ahead to anticipate what needs to be put in place now, how you can lead successfully through the transition, is going to make the growth more sustainable for the long term.  Here are the tips and techniques that really work:

Communicate clear goals and expectations to your employees.  Most of them want to be a part of a compelling future, to know what is most important at work and what excellence looks like.  Give everyone an understanding of the business strategy and how their jobs contribute to the big picture.

Share information and numbers.  When you keep your employees informed they tend to feel a greater sense of ownership. Let them in on what is going on within the company, keeping communication hopeful and truthful. Don’t be afraid to share bad news, instead be more strategic about how you and your managers deliver it. 

Encourage upward communication.  You and your managers can have an insight into what things are important to employees by being visible and asking people direct, using team meetings and even surveys. Be open-minded and encourage people to express their ideas and perspectives without criticism. Take every opportunity to demonstrate to staff how their feedback is being used.
Communicate important news in time.  Hearing about an important update from media, colleagues or family and friends can have a negative impact on employee morale. Ensure your people hear these messages from you and your managers as soon as possible.

Actively promote organizational effectiveness, reputation, values and ethics.  Employees want to feel good about their leaders, where they work, the products they sell and the reputation of their company. Be conscious that employees are constantly watching leadership to see how their decisions affect the strategic direction of the organization, and whether their actual behaviours are consistent with what they say publicly.

The Human Resource will be pleased to advise on techniques for continuing to engage with your employees as the business grows, internal communication and developing the skills your managers will need.

Contact us on enquiries@thehr.co.uk or 07884 475303.