It’s been a great week with a number of comments posted about Performance Appraisals. My bias is, absolutely, it is the responsibility of the Manager to make judgments about the effectiveness of each team member.
Many of my clients have found a 360 degree approach helpful, so much so, that we were asked to create a web-based application to ensure confidentiality. It allows for perspectives from multiple points of view and provides a platform for a very frank discussion. Here’s the way it works.
I usually allow the subject to select approximately fifty percent of the respondents to the survey, then as the Manager, I backfill the other fifty percent of respondents.
Once the surveys are collected and confidentially compiled by the website, I print a copy for subject and schedule the conversation. I use a highlighter to mark comments that are similar from one respondent to the next. An isolated observation may not mean much, but two similar comments get my attention and three or more similar comments might mark a trend.
Then we talk. At the conclusion of our conversation, I ask the subject to write up three things they commit to start doing and three things they commit to stop doing.
If you would like to see how this works for your team, you can try one out at the following link.