The Short Answer

Why Performance Appraisals Exist

We need to start from understanding the key reason why a performance appraisal is designed.

It is also important to go through the purpose that a performance appraisals are trying to achieve in most of the organisations.

Who Decides the Goals?

The forms or the process is predominantly designed to ensure that there is a group, which we call either leadership team or the board or the management, who have decided that as an organization, certain goals need to be achieved.

Connecting Individual Roles to Organisational Goals

The performance appraisal ensures that every individual understands what part of their role is necessary to be done to achieve the organisation goals and then to ensure that the work to be done and being done are aligned.

So any organisation will have a performance management system to try and ensure that whatever the goal or the objective an organisation is trying to achieve is achieved by each individual in their own capacity and scope.

Why This Clarity Matters in Conversations

If we have this one single clarity, then we can communicate with any employee in terms of how their performance has been and how that performance has actually contributed to the organisation in achieving the overall objective.

If we have this one single clarity, then we can communicate with any employee in terms of how their performance has been and how that performance has actually contributed to the organisation in achieving the overall objective.

And, if we can do this alignment or just show the employee the relationship, then it’s going to be very easy for us to have conversations with the employee, whether they are difficult conversations, whether they are easy conversations, or whether they are, as a fact of a matter, just simple discussions informing about how things went.

The Bottom Line

Bottom line, we need to ensure that we understand what an individual is doing and what is it that the organisation wants the individual to do and build a numerical, transparent relationship between the two.

Bottom line, we need to ensure that we understand what an individual is doing and what is it that the organisation wants the individual to do and build a numerical, transparent relationship between the two.