Question

Why isn’t it a good idea to wait until a formal appraisal session to correct the poor performance of an employee?

Answer 1

It is always advisable for the employee to perform well throughout the year and not near the appraisal time. The reasons are listed below:

1. Recency effect: It is the phenomenon of retaining the perception in the human mind. So, if an employee works really well in the near time of appraisals, then by the recency effect, it is highly likely that the manager will give him a good rating and he will get benefitted. But this does not work always and managers take the yearly rating into consideration.

2. Continuous evaluation criterion: Today's companies have a continuous evaluation criterion where the employees get evaluated on different parameters throughout the year and this rating helps in the appraisals in the end. So clearly, working really hard near the appraisals won't help much.

3. Different manager feedback: Due to cross-functional teams and different managers, an employee gets a good exposure to working with different people and gets evaluated by all of them. So, even if the latest manager has given a good rating to an employee, whereas the previous managers had given low ratings, the overall rating will be less and appraisals will be low.

4. Projects: Working in a mediocre way will not let an employee enter into good projects and this will end up with low exposure and learnings in the company. This will lead to low employability and ultimately, low appraisals.