An appraisal is commonly a formal meeting between you (or the supervisor responsible) and the employee where a performance evaluation can be made with the comments and opinions of both.

The complexity and depth that you go into will relate to what you are trying to achieve from the appraisal. This will be outlined further in the next section.

The evaluation is recorded and a copy is kept by yourself and the employee who will use it as feed-back to act on anything that has been suggested or commented on. The evaluation that has been recorded will further be used in the next formal appraisal to determine the level of improvement by the employee during that period.

Although you may feel you have completed the evaluation by holding a meeting with employees, appraisal can be seen as an on-going process. It is your responsibility (if you are the supervisor) to ensure that employees are acting on the feed-back given and that they understand what they have to do. This doesn't necessarily mean another meeting, just a regular check to see if everything is ok.

The appraisal may be assigned by the manager/employer but is usually carried out by the employees' immediate supervisor (if not the same person). Doing it this way is more effective as the supervisors will have a better knowledge of the employees and therefore will be able to evaluate performance with more accuracy.

 

Reasons for an Appraisal

There are many reasons why you may deicide that an appraisal is appropriate and below is a common list for using one:

The main benefits for using an appraisal system are as follows:

Appraisals have no set structure when time is involved and are usually done when the business believes it is necessary. Ideally, appraisal should be something that goes on all year but there are only so many times when you can formally evaluate your employees.

Although different people will have different opinions on when an appraisal evaluation should be issued, the first is suggested after six months of the initial employment of the employee. After this, the next appraisal is suggested six months later and then extended to following yearly periods. It is therefore saying that all employees will have different times for appraisal evaluations but you may designate a specific time of the year where you will evaluate all employees at the same time.

So far, we have used the term 'performance'. You may already have your own ideas of evaluating performance but below are ways that you can split it up and determine the level of standard for each employee:

1 Introduction
2 Appraisal Evaluation