Chapter 3. The Types of Performance Appraisals

Performance appraisals come in three main categories: feedback from the employee himself; feedback from the employee's co-workers and customers; and feedback from you, the manager. In order to generate the most thorough and accurate feedback for your employees, the best approach actually combines all three components.

The feedback that you provide is a critical part of the process, but it isn't necessarily the first step in the annual performance appraisal. You can build a better foundation for your feedback by first gathering performance data from two other workplace sources: the employee who is about to be evaluated, and the employee's associates.

In this chapter, I walk you through each of the three types of evaluations, showing you how they work together to give you the full picture of an employee's performance.

Feedback from the Employee: Self-Evaluations

One of the most powerful ways to open the evaluation process is to have your employees do a self-evaluation. There is nothing complicated about this step. All you need to do is give the employee a blank copy of the exact form that you're using and ask her to complete it for herself.

Encourage her to truly think about her performance during the year and to be totally honest and forthright. In addition, let her know that you'll be carefully looking over ...

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