Effective Employee Performance Appraisals 

The employee performance appraisal process consists of measuring and documenting employee performance and providing continual feedback to your employees on their progress toward reaching goals and objectives. Employee performance appraisals will most likely be conducted once or twice a year and sometimes more. Employee performance appraisals contain inter-linking steps for assessing, summarizing and developing the work performance of an employee, and to develop future performance goals and expectations.

Effective employee performance appraisals will ideally motivate your employees to perform better. You the manager should be positive and encouraging during the employee performance appraisal. Begin by talking about the employee's strengths. As a manager, you should be sensitive to job security.  Job security is usually the top concern for the most employees. The employee performance appraisal creates a very good opportunity to let the employee know that you value them and the contribution they make to the company.

You the manager should be consist and fair. You should apply performance criteria to all employees, not just a select few. To assist with this process, employee performance review software is available to help you track and control the process.

As the manager, you should provide the employee with training and mentoring to help your employee with improving their performance.  Look for ways to get the most out of your employees.  Consider a workforce management solution to help you manage and automate the employee performance appraisal process so you can become an effective manager.

Take the time to explain what you and the employee can achieve by working together. It serves no purpose to use employee performance appraisals to tell employees all the things they are doing wrong. The employee performance appraisal process will allow the manager to be truthful about unsatisfactory employee performance. As the manager, you should avoid confrontation and not be critical of the employee in general terms. The goal of the process is to appraise employee job performance and not the individual. A performance appraisal that turns into a complaint session loses out on the opportunity to raise employee morale.

If you need to correct employee performance, be specific so the employee comprehends what should be corrected.  Communication is the key here. Set specific time frames for when you think the employee should achieve improvement. As the manager, you should schedule a follow up employee performance appraisal within 3 to 6 months. This will give the employee a chance to improve performance and receive a more favorable appraisal which helps both the employee and the company.

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