Appraisals are a waste of time if…

by Hannah Keep, expert Recruitment Trainer

They aren’t followed up.

Performance management is still an area the recruitment industry needs to get better at. Taking the time to conduct yearly appraisals and monthly reviews is good practice, but a complete waste of everyone’s time, if nothing changes as a result.

So often I see appraisals being done at the start of the year and then forgotten until the following year with development plan being lost by consultants and the manager’s who conducted them.

For me an appraisal meeting should be about 90 minutes long – 50% of the time spent reviewing the past year, 50% agreeing career and personal goals and then designing a SMART Action Plan.

After this meeting has taken place the consultant and manager should both have soft copies of the Appraisal form and Action plan and this should be referred back to as often as possible. I recommend spending 15 minutes at the end of your Monthly Reviews to check in on the longer term goals and reviewing what actions have been taken. If you are relying on consultants to do the actions just because you created a plan at the start of the year, good luck with that!

It is a manager’s responsibility to regularly review longer terms goals, recognise progress, reset actions where required and provide the support necessary for successful achievement. It is a consultant’s responsibility to take the actions required to achieve the goals they said were important to them.

Keeping goals alive is the single most important thing to do if you want to drive performance in your team.

These goals are the things your consultants said are important to them, professionally and personally so motivating them towards what they want creates more motivation and makes their KPIs have real meaning.

If your performance conversations just focus on the here and now, today, this week, this month, then you are ‘managing reactively’ and are missing a trick when it comes to really engaging your people.

So make a new year’s resolution to get your Performance management process up to scratch and keep your appraisals alive, otherwise why bother doing them?

Hannah Keep, expert Recruitment Trainer

If you want to learn how to motivate your people and drive exceptional performance, then take a look at the Complete Recruitment Manager programme Hannah runs for the IOR.
The next course starts on the 23rd January, click here for full course details & brochure.

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