Performance Appraisal Interview

Questions:

• Do you find employee appraisals an effective tool?
• Do you encourage feed back during your employee appraisals? 
• Do you find doing these appraisals once a year sufficient or would you like to do them on a more consistent basis? 
• When telling an employee they have to make changes or improvements, do you give them specific examples on what they need to improve on?
• When giving employees complements on their performances, do you give them specific examples? 

Expectations/ Preparation:

I admittedly did not have a lot of expectations going into the interview other than getting a better point of view and understanding of performance appraisals. I was hoping though to get a better perspective of the appraisals by interviewing someone who doesn't do these appraisals in the health care industry. I was hoping to gain a better understanding if there actually were differences with these or are they just about the same as those done by health care employees. 

So going into the interview I thought of questions that I thought would give me a better insight to these questions and thoughts. Finally I hoped to be able to gain a better opinion on whether these appraisals are really needed or not.  

Interview: 

I interviewed a girl who works for a house cleaning company. She goes around on a periodic basis and evaluates different employees who are doing the house cleanings. She reviews with them what things they need to improve on and also the things that they are doing well. 

• Question 1:  She feels that employee appraisals are very important for her to do. She feels that doing these appraisals helps her to see were they both are at, and to make sure that both her and the employee are on the same page. And then in the end she is able to help out the employee see better the big picture of what the company is wanting to be done. 
• Question 2: She feels that employee feed back is very important for her appraisals so that she can see were an employee is coming from and what they may or may not be thinking in certain instances. 
• Question 3: She feels that once a year is certainly not sufficient enough. She feels that employees need a consistent reminder of expectations and things that are going on in the company. She said that it might be less work for her to just do it once a year, but that the employees would suffer from a lack of feedback from her and the company. 
• Question 4: She feels that it is very important for her to be able to give her employees examples of the things that they are needing to improve upon, so that they can know that she knows what is going on with them. She said that hypothetical examples don't work because when people hear them they think they don't apply to them. Ultimately, when they have specific examples they can know the specific things that they need to improve upon.  
• Question 5: She feels that it is also important that she gives them specific examples of the good things that they are doing so that employee moral can increase, so that they can know that she sees the good things that they do, and also so that they can get rewards and recognition for the good things that they do. 

Outcomes: 

From this I was able to get a better point of view and understanding of the importance of employee appraisals from the things that she was able to talk about and describe from the questions I asked. I thought it was very true what she said about these appraisals with the importance of them being done on a more consistent basis so that everyone could be on the same page. I also like how she said employee feedback was an important thing for her so that she could know and better understand what and were the employees were coming from. She felt that made her a better manager. Finally, I liked how she said that employee appraisals helps the employees see better the big picture of the company and what is expected of them. Often times after a while of no feed back employees can start drifting from the big picture of the company and start doing there own things. Its important that they have this constant feedback of what is expected of them. 

Summary: 

In the end I very much enjoyed doing this interview. It certainly helped give me a different and better perspective of performance appraisals and their importance. It will also help me when I go into my next employee appraisal so that I can take a different approach than I have in the past, and also the importance that I come with my own questions and concerns.