There are few things that consistently irritate me as much as the annual Performance Appraisal ritual. My experience is limited to the companies and one federal agency that I was part of, but I have no reason to believe that it is substantially different elsewhere. The appraisals serve (or used to) multiple functions1:
a rating mechanism per the performance plan laid out at the beginning of the year (which also drives the, albeit marginal, bonuses).
a feedback mechanism for the employee to include identifying areas for future growth and training
a way for the manager to show their appreciation for the staff on their team
In my experience it is mostly an exercise in driving down morale than an honest to goodness mechanism to build a learning organization. I will find time for a more thorough analysis of what is wrong with this system and ways it could be improved for another time. This year’s appraisal cycle reminded me about one critical topic - the sparse nature of feedback that senior leaders get in such organizations. This article in Fast Company was a good recent reminder of some steps we can take to change that. Publicly acting on one piece of feedback has proven to be useful and effective for me in the past.
1 It will interesting to watch the evolution of employee performance management under the current administration