,"Do Away with Annual Reviews",

Dear Reader,
Following my last post on,"Appraisal",i got a mail on,"Do Away with Annual Reviews",which has been reproduced here below.

To have it reflected here, i have taken the permission of the person who originally sent the mail, which is clearly seen in the transcripts copied here.

As my grey cells are collating further thoughts on the same to be posted here, enjoy the read and drop me your thoughts.
Best,
Prasad.

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 6:45 PM, Harvinderjit Kaur wrote:
Sure. Please go ahead.
Have a good and blessed weekend ahead.
Kind regards,
Harvinder
--- On Sun, 6/17/12, prasad agali wrote:
From: prasad agali
Subject: Re: PLS READ -Re: [Trainers Forum] Q&A: Do Away with Annual Reviews
To: "Harvinderjit Kaur"
Date: Sunday, June 17, 2012, 7:50 PM
Greetings of the day Harvinder,
Just to know if i can reproduce your mail in it's enitrety on my blog.[link is below].
wishing you a nice weekend
Thanks,
best,
Prasad.


From: prasad agali
Subject: PLS READ -Re: [Trainers Forum] Q&A: Do Away with Annual Reviews
To: "Harvinderjit Kaur"
Date: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 10:51 PM
Greetings of the day Harvinder,
Congrats and Bravo,
With your latest article as shared below, you have once again hit the nail on the right head .
This very thought was in my brain for a long time.
Guess this inpsires me to take the ideas out of my [box] - brain and spill them out.
It's a matter of perspective after all and till the world understands , accepts and applies, let them be the ones asleep, while the few march on.
Thanks,
Best
Prasad.

On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Harvinderjit Kaur wrote:

Should We Dispatch With Annual Performance Reviews?
[Workforce Management | May 17, 2012]

Q: What are the alternatives if we scrap the annual performance review?

- Torn in HR, warehouse/distribution, Virginia Beach, Virginia

A: The issue is not your performance-review system. It's probably a deficiency in coaching skills among your managers.

Keep the annual review, but add the following elements:

a) Launch a recurring training program to help managers develop coaching skills. If you don't do this, none of your other efforts really matter.

b) Work with your senior leaders to implement a system whereby managers are held accountable for ''one-on-one check-ins'' with all the employees they directly supervise. These sessions should occur at least once a month. Implementing this requirement forces your managers to practice and hone their own coaching skills.

c) Be prepared to serve as a coach to the coaches. They are going to need your help.

Coaching is the replacement for the annual performance review. In fact, the lack of coaching skill is the No. 1 reason for performance reviews. The one-on-one sessions should truly be of a check-in nature - no rating scales or other formal assessment measures. The manager schedules time for employees to discuss their own list of items.

Your managers are there to knock down barriers for employees as much as possible. Once each employee is done with his list, the manager uses the coaching skills to talk about which things are going well and refocus the employee's attention on potential areas for improvement.
[Source: Kris Dunn, HR Capitalist, Birmingham, Alabama]
Regards,
Harvinder
Google+: https://plus.google.com/104651233239917243747/posts?hl=en
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/harvinderjit

Appraisal

Dear Readers,

Greetings of the day.

My brain has been swirling with the thought of,"when will organizations move towards regular or monthly appraisals of their employees?"

Today's, "Times of India" Mumbai edition, carried an article,"Every Six Months Companies would carry out Appraisals to motivate their employees".

This is a point that has been playing in my brain for a long time.

What is an Appraisal?

Is it merely a tool to ascertain how is the employee functioning?

Is it good enough to be used only annually or every six months to know how the employee is delivering and in the process try to motivate or weed out!

Ha! Indeed what an irony !

An appraisal needs to be conducted regularly.

This is not to monitor or keep tabs on the employees.

A regular appraisal done once a month or atleast once in every quarter would be of great help to employees and organizations.

How?

Employees Fear of Appraisal Would be removed.
This is a big time point.
When done annually it instills a fear in the employees brain as to what is going to happen? what would be the end result? and many other Q's that could cross the brain.

Employees Begin to Trust in Superiors and Organization.
When done regularly, employees would know what is in the offing.
Employees would then be comfortable.
Levels of Trust would increase.

Employees have Confidence in the System.
When done regularly employees would actually start looking forward to it.
This creates confidence in the system.

Employees Would Understand better when done regularly.
The employee would begin to understand the process better and ensure that his deliveries / output is better.
This creates and ensues better productivity at higher levels and also reduce the margin of mistakes , errors of commision and ommision.

Organization benefits
The organization benefits with the least amount of disgruntled or dissatisfied employees.
The spinoffs are; less attrition rates, allround motivation , bonding and solidarity within the organization, retention and enrichment of existing Knowledge-base.

Now there is a Q here?

What is that one significant gain here with regular , monthly or quarterly appraisals?

Every Appraiser and Appraisee has a tremendous and most splendid opportunity to develop their relationship, improve levels of communication between themselves,ensue better bonding, be more approchable with respect to one another, network better, understand work related issues, synchronize working.

It is a huge gain for employees and organizations.

Organizations have taken years to come to biannual appraisal .

It may now take them decades if not eons to move towards monthly or quarterly appraisals.

It need not be said that a superior who is in regular contact and communciation with his reportees, would find that regular or monthly appraisal is much easier to accomplish and time saving, than one who is hardly communicating or is in touch.

Communicating or being in touch hardly means a curtsy originated,"Hi, bye".

It means being open , available any time the reportee needs to interact , being able to provide stimulating points for employees to think differently, arrive at solutions and sometimes being the untitled coach or mentor.

In my humble opinion and belief these few points as ensivaged above, are big spurs in themselves towards employee motivation.

I dare anyone to draw a leaf or a line from this and make the change !?

The change would be a paradigm shift in itself.

Best,

Prasad.

Dear Reader,

Greetings of the day !

I have been closely following the dimension of leadership.

What intrigues one is that leadership is a dimension everyone talks about, most have an opinion on it, still some think and practice it and are good at it, and just about four or five are excellent leaders.

In the Indian scenario,the leaders worth citing are:

Military: Field Marshal Cariaappa,Field Marshal Sam Bahadur Maneckshaw.

Politically: M.K. Gandhi,J. Nehru,Vijaya Laxmi Pandit,L.B. Shastri,
Indira Gandhi & Rajiv Gandhi.

Industry / Business: Rahul Bajaj,Narayan Murthy,Azim Premji,Jayateerth.Rao,Dr.Reddy[Apollo Group].

Spiritual / Religious: Sri Adi Shankracharya,Sri Guru Swami Madhwacharya,
Sri Guru Swami Vyasaratheertharu, Sri Guru Swami Raghavendrateertharu, Swami Ramakrishna Parmahansa, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Guru Nanak Dev,
Shri Sai Baba of Shirdi and a few more could be listed.

Women Leaders:Dr.Kiran Bedi,Naina Lal Kidwai,Kiran.Mazumdar.Shaw,

Now this is just on the Indian scenario.

Have a look at the international scenario.

Scan the eyes of your brain to see what you find and you come across more names in any of the above fields.

The fact exists that as a nation we are poor leaders in ourselves.

This is regardless of what our genetical make-up is,or from the family,environmental background we have had.

The world at large is facing a severe crisis of excellent leaders.

India in particular is starved of excellent leaders.

To continue with a diatribe on this is easy.

Let me pause here and invite you to read this article as extracted below.

It is titled,"A Sad Lesson In Collaborative Innovation by Ron Hadner".

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/a_sad_lesson_in_collaborative_innovation.html

Enjoy the read! and let your grey cells work themselves out to enable you be better and perhaps merit a lesson in learning from it.

Best,

Prasad.