Professional: Upwardly mobile

Approaching appraisal time? Nicholas King suggests ways of making the appraisal process more rewarding for you and your company

Performance appraisals are often seen as just another part of the regular corporate ritual, not as something useful. The main problem, according to Beth Hooper, a business performance specialist, is that most managers are not very good at it.

?Managers feel uncomfortable playing God,? says Hooper. ?They They don?t want to offend the person, so they give generalised feedback, rather than something more honest and constructive. Or they go to the other extreme and try to show their boss just how tough they can be on their subordinates.? she said.

Companies are guilty of not training their managers to carry out appraisals properly and not using them consistently. One department may use appraisals to determine annual salary increases, while another will use them to determine training and development needs. Hooper believes these companies are missing out.

If the process is handled correctly, she explains, appraisals can be one of the most powerful ways of communicating corporate objectives and motivating individual performance. Even if your company has a good scheme, taking the trouble to understand what appraisals are all about will help you make the most of them.

First of all, appraisals are not judgmental. They are simply about evaluating performance against stated objectives which have been agreed between the manager and employee, probably at the previous appraisal. The trick is to agree a set of objectives with your manager that are challenging but achievable.

Some of these objectives can be corporate, while others can be more personal.

Ask your manager to build certain things into your personal development objective which will keep you one step ahead in your profession. Take the initiative to actively participate in the appraisal process, so that it does not become another personnel exercise.

Gently take the lead on analysing your value to the company and the performance measures that evaluate your achievements most accurately. Turn these into clear and precise objectives that you can suggest to your manager as the basis for appraisal. Smart managers, according to Hooper, increasingly let employees set their own goals in the appraisal system.

?They understand,? she says, ?that this creates a greater sense of responsibility, that the targets are their own.? The manager?s role becomes one of coaching the employee towards targets that are realistic, while collectively adding to the corporate ambition. The manager also has a duty to ensure the system is fair: if a target is met, the promised reward has to follow.

The predictability of a fair reward for results achieved is a powerful motivator. In companies where this applies, the appraisal process becomes vital to the individual and the organisation. So vital, jokes Hooper, that in some companies employees have started sleeping with their appraisal document under the pillow.