Thursday, January 28, 2016

Corporate appraisal


“You don’t get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate”, they say. There comes the reward of how the employees performed during 2015. Response of the appraisal is expected to be ‘peanuts’ this year in most of the organizations. Employees are unhappy for the same reason. Even though they rightly have low expectations from the organizations which could not perform well in 2015 however they sound unhappy and they 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, people managers opine that the organizations are going through 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 “favoring favorites” allegations.
Appraisal is not mere a managers’ responsibility only, the reportee is equally responsible for what he gets in appraisal at the end of the year.

What YOU need to do:
Before going to the manager for appraisal, you need to understand the business your organization is in, its challenges and opportunities. Especially try to understand the industry and standing of your organization amongst its competitors. And if your organization has achieved its goals or not.
Moreover;

1.    You should keep a record of their achievements and overall performance so that the details could be presented during appraisal

2.    You must not think of any favoritism or conspiracy theories. Even if they exit, they plague your mindset, performance and negotiation

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

4.    Becoming managers’ favorite is not that tough, only if you know what his objectives are for the year and help him achieve them as they are the ones which were divided between the team

5.    Exceptional performances usually speak for themselves. Find out a way to do them and project them
6.    Reportees 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 organization, same should depict from your work and same should be presented to the management as to how your work benefits the department and the organization

7.    Quota system in promotions has been introduced to different organizations 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.

8.    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.

9.    NEGOTIATE, NEGOTIATE, NEGOTIATE until you get satisfied but the negotiation should not hurt anyone’s benefits and it should not affect your relationship.

10.  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.

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

12.  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 2016’s performance.

Appraisal is all about meeting and exceeding organization’s expectations. More than 11 months of the year are still to come. Year 2016 can be planned more effectively by keeping organizations objectives in mind as achieving the organization’s targets will benefit employees too, only if they perform exceptionally well and negotiate successfully.

The article has been published in Daily Tribune