No longer is a ‘job for life’. Studies have shown that people will change jobs on average 12 times during their careers, while the cost for replacing one employee in Ireland now stands at €13,100. Active staff investment is vital for talent retention in the current job market.
In the past, appraisals were the ‘go-to’ annual review for companies and their employees. But, in 2015, Deloitte revamped their review process, after spending nearly 2 million hours on reviews and appraisals.
Industry leaders are thinking up alternatives – are you?
Appraisals: Pros and Cons
Appraisals benefit businesses by providing the opportunity to review staff and company performance, initiate needed improvements, and offer praise to top staff and departments.
Despite well-meaning intentions, appraisals have become dreaded by managerial departments worldwide.
Eating up large amounts of time, annual reviews are monotonous, as managers attempt to complete them as quickly as possible. As a result, companies can often struggle to gain meaningful insight into the performance of their staff and company, while all colleagues lose out on valuable time.
Taking a Different Approach
So, the pros and cons are clear then. But is there an alternative approach that would suit your business better?
- Look Beyond the Form
Looking beyond the form could provide an effective alternative, one that ensures feedback is meaningful rather than part of a process.
These meetings should be focused heavily on the employee, where they are in terms of progress, and how they see themselves and their role.
Only by providing constructive feedback that goes beyond filled-out boxes will performance improve and will effective impact be made.
- ‘Stay’ Interviews vs Annual Reviews
But appraisals, when used correctly, give insight, not only in staff performance, but their job satisfaction, work-life balance and ambitions for the future.
‘Pointless’ annual reviews become meaningful ‘stay’ interviews for staff, giving managers the opportunity to provide useful feedback to staff, and to act on information given to them by individuals.
What Are the Alternatives?
Maybe taking a different approach isn’t enough. Maybe you want to give your business a complete alternative to the annual appraisal. What can be done?
- Little and Often
Regular feedback can resolve this, making review workloads more manageable, and providing staff with useful, relevant and fairer feedback.
Managers could host monthly or bi-monthly miniature reviews with staff members. Not only will feedback quality improve, but managers can utilise the opportunity to foster openness, and give staff the space to bring up issues.
- Peer Reviews
While this has its advantages, managers should tread carefully. In any workplace, not all employees may get on or like each-other. These tensions could have the capacity to spill out into peer reviews.
When receiving these peer reviews, managers should watch out for overly-biased opinions, and ensure they receive reviews from multiple peers to breakdown any bias that may occur.