Assessing performance: Corporate appraisal when business could not fare well

Appraisal is not mere manager’s job, employees are equally responsible.

LAHORE: “You don’t get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate,” they say. There comes the reward of how the employees performed during 2014. Response of the appraisal is expected to be ‘peanuts’ this year in most of the organisations.

Employees are unhappy for the same reason. Even though they rightly have low expectations from the organisations which could not perform well, however, they sound unhappy and feel their line managers have not done justice to their individual performances.

They have the impression that they were under-rated. They deserved promotion or a better increment in the salary this year, however, they did not get what they deserve.

On the other hand, managers are of the opinion that the organisations are going through the worst economic crunch and the employers cannot accommodate their employees anymore. But as a matter of fact, the bell-curve system and its distribution has left managers with “favouring favourites” allegations.

Appraisal is not mere a managers’ responsibility only, the employee is equally responsible for what he gets in appraisal at the end of the year.

What the employee
needs to do

Before going to the manager for appraisal, you need to understand the business your organisation is in, its challenges and opportunities. Especially try to understand the industry and standing of your organisation amongst its competitors and if your organisation has achieved its goals or not.

Moreover, you should keep a record of their achievements and overall performance so that details could be presented during appraisal. You must not think of any favouritism or conspiracy theories. They plague your mindset, performance and negotiation.

Focus on your own performance, make a best ‘sales pitch’ of your contribution to the organisation and as to how you were beneficial to the team so that you could present your achievements in a minimum timeframe.

Becoming manager’s favourite is not that tough, if you know what his objectives are for the year and help him achieve them. Exceptional performances usually speak for themselves. Find out a way to do them and project them.

Employees must learn the art of advertising themselves. Most of the people do well but they do not present it well. Whatever you do, you do for the organisation, same should depict from your work and same should be presented to the management as to how your work benefits the department and the organisation.

Quota system in promotions has been introduced to different organisations where only a specific number of employees can be promoted. You must know what it is and how possibly you can become a part of those who are given more monetary benefits. Bell Curve is an extremely competitive system. One has to perform exceptionally well to be a consistent top performer. This system usually decides the future of the employee. Get proper understanding of it.

Negotiate until you get satisfied but the negotiation should not hurt anyone’s benefits and it should not affect your relationship. Follow the golden rule of  “Convince or Get Convinced” during appraisal. This helps reach a satisfactory point and keeps the momentum of best performance accelerated.

You must know how your team members are performing at the same time and how good you are.

Appraisal gives you reward of previous year and guidelines as to how next year should be spent. Get clarity of both from the management. It will help you negotiate better on 2015’s performance.

Appraisal is all about meeting and exceeding organisation’s expectations. More than 11 months of the year are still to come. Year 2015 can be planned more effectively by keeping organisation’s objectives in mind as achieving the targets will benefit employees too, only if they perform exceptionally well and negotiate successfully.

The writer is a corporate training specialist at Mobilink

Published in The Express Tribune, January 26^th,  2015.

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