Read a great discussion this morning in the HR and Talent Management Executive group in Linked In about the yearly appraisal process. Seems many HR Professionals agree that the process is broken, but are somewhat stumped on how to persuade leaders to do otherwise.
When working with our corporate leadership training clients, there is an example we use to help leaders understand the value of more consistent coaching and feedback sessions that I also thought I’d share here as that appraisal time of year is upon us.
The example we use is “If you have children, imagine sharing with your children feedback on Christmas Eve about the behavior they demonstrated at Easter and then telling them the presents (i.e. raise or no raise) they receive the next day will be a reflection of how well they hunted for eggs.”
Bottom line? People (leaders AND employees) cannot fix what they don’t know is broken and waiting too long to give them any sincere and valuable feedback creates more resentment, confusion, and often anger, than performance improvement. Not to mention, a long lag time in performance guidance allows that much more time for bad habits to form and then you’re dealing with not only changing performance, but breaking a now well formed habit.
The issue is not that the appraisal system is broken, as it appears that is common knowledge. The challenge is helping people understand WHY it needs to change and how they will benefit from making the change… 🙂
