Facts and evidence

A word about facts and evidence – they are essential to carry out a fair and balanced appraisal. If you go into an appraisal meeting with gut feelings and no substantiating facts, your credibility will drop to zero and the employee’s compliance levels will be low.

Facts and evidence allow you to focus on the outcomes achieved. They also support your case and make it easy for the employee to see that you have a clear issue to discuss.

Remember that the key to a good appraisal is to focus on what happened, not on the person. For example, if Tim is consistently 15 to 20 minutes late there are a number of ways of opening the discussion regarding this.

• 1.‘Why can’t you get up in time to get to work for 9?’
• 2.‘What prevents you from arriving at work on time?’
• 3.‘Are you aware that when you are late, other people have to interrupt their work to answer your phone calls?’
• 4.‘On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday of last week, Jim had to stop what he was doing to answer your phone, because you hadn’t arrived in the office on time. On Tuesday this caused him to have to redo the chart he had been concentrating on, which wasted almost half an hour of his time. On Thursday he was in discussion with Gary from Marketing and me and we had to wait for him to come back before the discussion could continue. I’m sure you appreciate that this is not good practice in the overall running of the department. What do you think you can do to deal with this situation?’

It’s easy to see that these are progressively more likely to result in productive outcomes. Number 1 may result in either a defensive or aggressive response. Number 2 can lead into sticky personal issues that should not be part of an appraisal. Number 3 doesn’t really offer any concrete evidence and can easily be brushed off with ‘well, everyone is late sometimes.’ Number 4 provides facts and evidence and doesn’t focus on personal issues, only on outcomes.

This sort of approach doesn’t usually happen by accident – it takes forethought and planning. Prepare your questions in advance and give plenty of thought to how you will phrase them. Take notes in with you so you don’t forget anything, and give the employee an opportunity to put forward their thoughts on the issue.