Time and again, it has been proven that performance appraisal is directly proportional to a positive performance outcome. Performance appraisal encompasses promotions, training and developments, feedback, grievances and much more. If an organization genuinely cares about employee growth and productivity, it is obvious that they have certain performance appraisal methods in place, and effective methods for that matter. The key to powerful gauging of performance is the fact that it is done within constraints of time, technology, and budget.
The world of business is changing as rapidly as ever and more so after the pandemic. Most top firms in the world unanimously resonate that annual performance review formats be abolished. Across the globe, there are wide ranging novel methods for estimating performance, some more efficient than others, and we bring to you the 5 best performance appraisal trends that you should watch out for:
360-degree feedback
The performance appraisal trend that has been picking up due to the advent of new and improved HCM platforms is the 360-degree feedback or otherwise known as the multi-rater or multisource feedback. World leaders like Google and Facebook advocate this method of measurement. It’s a systemized and sophisticated way of collecting reviews from various stakeholders involved in an employee’s work lifecycle. Considering the views from people of all cadre, the HR team can form a holistic assessment for their employees. According to Forbes, 89% of HR leaders agree that ongoing peer feedback and check-ins are key for successful outcomes.
Psychological Appraisal
This is one of the most innovative methods to measure employee conduct. It is intuitive and focuses largely on personal factors of employees that affect their performance such as their emotions and intellect. It is a forward-looking approach that gives higher importance to what lies in the future than what has happened in the past. Especially after the post pandemic era, this method will serve exceptionally helpful in that it will speak to the vulnerability factor of the working class.
Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS) Method
BARS method is based on mapping behavioral traits to numerical ratings. It entails generation of critical incidents, editing into a common format, removing any redundancy and normalization. BARS is one of the most effective of all the methods because it is efficient both qualitatively and quantitatively. One of the distinguishing factors about this method is that it also takes into account the intangible traits of an employee and maps it to a rating scale. Also, it removes bias to an extremely large extent.
Checklist Method
In this method, the employees’ performance is evaluated based on a specific checklist that the HR department has put together. It is a numerical way of evaluating performance, in which, the score for individual performance goals is summed up to get an overall score that best describes the performance of the employee. In short, the checklist method has behavioral checkpoints. The key to an efficient outcome in this method is creating an effective checklist and assigning weights based on the importance of factors. There are many fortune 500 companies that reply on this method for evaluating their employees’ performance.
Management by Organization (MBO)
One of the most sought-after and commonly implemented methods, MBO, stresses on defining clear goals and respective objectives by both employees and their managers. These goals are measurable, tangible and align with the goals of the organization as a whole. It is a step-by-step process that, in a bird’s eye view, entails implementation, meeting expectations, measurement and attainment of the goals that had been set up initially. Finally, a periodic review is done so as to discuss the employees’ development.
Conclusion
Like any other practice used in the corporate world, various performance measuring methods have their pros and cons. Every organization has different needs and requirements from its employees. To meet these requirements and encourage employees to do better for the company, it is crucial to research, test and then implement the method that best suits the firm. For instance, Tesla often does trials and works on finding newer methods that suit them. Similarly, it is not always true that firms should only rely only on one performance appraisal method, what they could instead do is use a mix of various methods to bring out the best.
