Looking into the past or predicting the future

Many people see appraisal as an opportunity to haul out all the misdemeanours and disasters of the past year. Some managers save up their ‘well dones’ for the annual appraisal as well. Neither of these are useful exercises. Both errors and excellence should be tackled at the time they occur. If errors are not corrected they will continue to occur – why wait for several months before sorting a problem out? If someone does well in January, praise in July has little value.

The only useful part of looking at what has happened is to comment on whether or not progress has been made since the last time this employee discussed their performance with you.

Nor should appraisal be an exercise in setting ambitious targets without any support. Once current performance and desired performance have been established, there will either be a good match, or a gap. If there is a gap, the future needs to be discussed only in so far as to work out how this gap might be bridged by the employee and the manager together. This is not the point at which you abandon the employee with, ‘OK Sunshine – there’s your destination, off you go. Let me know when you get there.’

The manager’s job is to help to work out the route and to provide useful advice on timetables and means of transport along the way, as well as some feedback on how the agreed schedule is progressing – a sort of tour guide.