Three Focus Areas in Depth

Focus Area 2: Writing the Performance Appraisal

Benefits of the Performance Appraisal Program

As you prepare to write the evaluation, reviewing the overall benefits of an appraisal process can help you write a better review.

1. Enhance communication between employees, managers, and supervisors
   
   Dialogue between an employee and their manager or supervisor should be continuous and include coaching, mentoring, and continuous learning.
   
   Employees are more likely to be motivated, successful, and satisfied with their jobs when they:
• Understand their roles, responsibilities, and expectations.
• Understand how what they do contributes to larger organizational goals.
• Understand what the organization and immediate supervisor considers to be acceptable levels of performance and how performance is measured.
• Have an opportunity to identify barriers/obstacles to the performance of their job.
• Receive recognition for their contributions and accomplishments.
• Are a partner in identifying their goals and objectives, assessing their strengths, and in developing a performance improvement plan for areas needing improvement.  Mutual development and agreement creates a sense of ownership and is a key to success.



2. Support Development of Employees
   
   Changing trends and evolving technology require an on-going commitment to enhance current skills, develop new skills and broaden knowledge.  The performance appraisal program places importance on the identification of continuous learning opportunities for enhancing employees’ abilities to perform, stay current in their jobs and fields of expertise, and/or to provide opportunities for career growth for personal gratification as well as to assist in meeting the organization’s evolving business needs and environment.  The performance appraisal serves as a formal tool to document needed improvement.
   
   
3. Support Continuous Quality Improvement
   
   The performance appraisal program is designed to be a tool for promoting timely and effective communication about performance.  It is structured to build a partnership between employees and their supervisors and managers to establish expectations and in assessing performance against identified goals and objectives.  Additionally, areas requiring improvement need to be proactively addressed.  Development of goals works best when jointly arrived at by the employee and the manager/supervisor.
   
   
4. Recognition
   
   The performance appraisal program provides employees with recognition for their work efforts and accomplishments.  It signals that the organization is genuinely interested in their individual performance, their contribution to the broader organizational goals and objectives, and in their development.
   
   
5. Review Position Description
   
   Take this opportunity to review and update the position description to reflect changes in duties and responsibilities since the last performance evaluation or last time it was updated.