Performance Appraisals

In many jobs there are performance reviews usually once a year. In most cases (at least in my experience), the review determines how much of a raise you get--if any.

There are different types of performance reviews. There can be a manager reviewing you (pretty common), you reviewing your peers (or vice versa), self evaluation, you reviewing your manager, and a 360-degree evaluation (anyone you have contact with in your job reviews you or your team).

I have only had a review where a manager was evaluating me. And in this category I've had different experiences. I had a review where I was sat down and when over the criteria and explained the reasoning for the ratings and the amount of the raise. I've also had a review (you'll never guess where!) where I simply found out my pay raise by the amount of my next paycheck. There is no explaination why you get a whole 20 cents more (not that I really care anyway).

A downside to a performance review is that employees know that it's coming a few months before. So when it's at that point, all of a sudden the work they produce is excellent. Come review time, the manager basically looks at the past few months and see excellent work and gives them a bigger raise.

From a management perspective, a better idea for performance reviews is when an employee completes a task or a goal they are evaluated on the entire task rather than on the past 12 months.

An advantage to a review is showing the employee areas to improve on and work on those to improve on the overall performance and making a better employee. It can also show the manager areas where they need to work on. Perhaps it's lack of direction. Perhaps it's something else. But when they see that their employees are lacking in one area they look at how they are dealing with that and see ways they can improve.

Overall, there are good and bad things about performance reviews. It's up to you to make it great!