RIP – Annual AppraisalIntroducing

LEAP(Light-weight Employee Assessment Program)- Sandeep Agarwal

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandeepbagarwalTwitter: @sandeepa24

Inspirations• Last 20 years have been going thru; this yearly appraisal, however fair

you try to be, perceptions rules over, resulting in many employee dissatisfaction, surge of attrition, productivity loss, time loss etc.

• LEAP – some ideas that inspired,• Indian Democracy system, where a PM can be elected in just 24 hours based on

e-electoral process for a 1.25B population.

• Thanks to Advancements in SOCIAL, instant FB, Twitter, etc.

• LinkedIn Rating system of Your Ranking

• Uber’s way of handling Driver Performance Score, and an app which does not allow you to book until previous driver’s rating completed.

• Our own Academic system assessment, where assessment is on regular basis and not only at END of year.

• BEST employer to work for – Always the Fairness and Transparency would be rated LOW even if the company has best policies, all credit to our AGE OLD TRADITIONAL Yearly Appraisal that is going on since the Industry was Born.

The Need for Appraisals

• Employee Performance

• Employee Feedback

• Employee Ratings

• Employee Increments

• Employee L&D Needs /Training

• Employee Career Path

Issues with Current Appraisal System• Long drawn process

• An HR tool to decide on Increments

• Heavily Top-down focused

• Most ratings have personal bias and heavily perception oriented.

• Feedbacks are given after long time, and the context and data points are either lost or no longer has a meaning/relevance.

• People just wait to see ratings, and the overall qualitative feedback gets ignored.

• Does not work in an Agile and Digital World, does not fit with young generation or Gen-Y.

What is real feedback?• Feedback is a tool for continuous improvement

• Need to be data/context oriented, and has to be either on standards/agreed measurement criteria's.

• Technical feedback needs to be given on job on right time to facilitate continuous improvement and growth of individual.

• Behavioral feedback needs to be data oriented and associated with a learning plan/training/mentorship.

“Qualitative feedbacks need to be given on the spot. No long objectives/measurement criteria's set at start of the year. We are in agile industry, our business/customer/projects/work items also changes on task-to-task or project-to-project basis.”

Problems with current Annual Appraisal• Example A: An employee that is more close to its supervisor and management, but not been that

ideal below the hierarchy.

• A person who meets his laid KRA’s mostly by support from others, but really has not put in his/her efforts.

• A leader where delegates does not feel there is contribution/support help provided.

• Heavy task master, meet targets but expense of people management.

• An order taker, does what customer says, but does not do value-adds.

• Person not approachable….etc. .. Etc.

• Person reports to different heads/PM/DM for different tasks/projects.

• Every Manager has a different way to manage his own people and provide ratings.

• Any employee survey rating company, the score on Fairness is often compared to Appraisal, hence the fairness and transparency scores always gets a low score in all surveys.

What is needed to address this?• KILL the ANNUAL Appraisal - NO APPRAISAL – NO LONG WAITING – NO

NORMALIZATIONs – NO LONG DISCUSSIONS – NO CONFLICTS – NO FRUSTRATION –NO PERCEPTIONS – NO UNFAIR RATINGS – NO ATTRITIONS because of Appraisal Systems.

• Welcome to the WORLD of “ LEAP – A lightweight Employee Assessment Program”

• Really value the employee, by providing instant on-job feedback for continuous improvement.

• Separate the ratings from Qualitative so that qualitative feedback/comments is well accepted

• Remove the top-down approach from quantitative ratings so that their a transparency, fairness in the system. It also gives an opportunity to address differential score coming, wherein a manager thinks a person is 4, but actually on ground he is 2 (on a scale of 5).

• Increments can be planned easily based on budgets allocated, without having personal bias.

• No MANUAL intervention for RATINGS, hence a full proof system.

• Divert attention and FOCUS to real business problems, rather than long months of appraisal cycle, will only results in dissatisfied employees.

How to Do it?

• Separate the Need of Appraisal in 3 distinct categories,

• Qualitative - Performance/Feedback/Trainings

• Quantitative - Ratings/Increments/Promotions

• Forward Looking - Career Path/Roles

Personal Diary – “My DIARY”• Every employee will have a personal page called “My DIARY” (can be seen similar to my

Facebook page)

• Managers, peers, reportees and any other person can provide feedbacks to be person anytime, providing data points etc. Whole aim should be to look at continuous improvement and not pointing fingers, feedback needs to context/situation based not personal.

• Situations when a feedbacks can be given (not limited to..)

• Completion of an assigned project

• Specific situation/context.

• Specific Tasks completed.

• Every Month/Quarter, a formal feedback is done, and discussion points updated in the tool. The current supervisor is responsible for ensuring completion of this. Feedback is given on performance in the month/Quarter, any gaps, identified training needs, and any behavioral traits or patterns

• This will ensure a good and multiple touch points. As its not against a detailed objectives etc., it can be a free flow based purely on the assigned tasks and data points.

• A person can choose to keep his page HIDDEN or make PUBLIC, it is desired to keep ALL Senior Management Pages public to bring in more transparency in the system.

Functional Diary

• Every Function (Business Unit, Support, Enabling, Practice, Industry Group etc., etc.) will have a public page.

• Qualitative comments ideas/suggestions can be posted by any one in the org on the respective function page.

• Employee can like, add comments or even start discussion threads – most of it to improve the function, and provide a feedback to the entity in question.

• Benefits – We have one page to view the function, help in improving the function, timely raise concerns, help improve the function. This will avoid people directly going to GLASSDOOR for negative feedbacks.

Quantitative Ratings

• How was the performance of Mr. ABC for XYZ Task/Quarter?

Suggestive times when a performance ratings are triggered,

- On completion of a Project

- At end of the Quarter, (mostly Auto Triggered)

“As Organization matures the project based rating can move to a task based rating, which would provide more accuracy and timely feedback and ratings for the individual, hence removing any personal bias or time lags in provide a rating”

Who Provides the Ratings• Manager (M), your team mates (Peers - P), your Reportees - R. (MPR)

• Suggested Weightage: (MPR: 40:20:40)

• In case the person is Individual Contributor or Junior most, hence no reportees (MPR–40:60:0)

• In case of a task which is standalone and having no team mates (MPR: 100:0:0)

• The ratio of MPR would vary organization to organization, or also from task to task as needed, intention is to keep Manager ratings at less than 50, and focus on more 360 degree feedback from reportees and peers/team for every task completion)

• A good Org tool is needed, every one including CEO will be staffed on a project. All persons staffed on a project will automatically will become peers.

• Benefits: A person can work on Multiple projects at same time, or multiple managers etc., only thing needed is adequate project created with proper team defined.

Quarterly Scores• At end of quarter, all scores received by individuals across all projects, and

also a Quarterly rating (auto triggered based on current project) are analyzed (simple average out), and a final rating presented to the individual.

CONGRATS Mr. ABC, your overall score for the Quarter is

3.62

You Rank at Top 2% among your competency

You Rank at Top 5% in your BU

You Rank Top 10% in your Practice

……………………………………..And many more Analytics and Insights ………………….

Increments – Break the YEARLY cycle• We can break the Annual increment cycle, and provide a year based

increment relevant to the employee. If a person joins in OND Quarter, his increments happens on Jan 1st next year.• Benefits – No Quarter miss, no unnecessary calculations, no unnecessary

comparison, distributed financial impact, no surge of any attritions etc.

• The FINAL Year SCORE is based on last 4 quarters average, the person can see the FINAL Score immediately once his year completes.

• High performance for e.g. 4.5 and above, can actually get a real bonus on top of salary, either can be given immediately or distributed in next 4 quarters. Quantum of actual Bonus can be determined by Management.• Benefits – You don’t have to bring high performers at very high salary levels

(instead provide an additional bonus for that year instead of bumping up the salary grids), it has seen many times that a 5-STAR person for 2 years, actually can come down to 2-STAR as he gets into higher competencies.

How do we take care for Individual Performance Targets?

• For people at senior level, who has targets associated, this targets will be directly linked to the variable pay of the person, and variable pay can be paid based on Met targets for the person either Quarterly or Annually.

• Benefits – This will make a big separation on People Performance and Results Achievement, many times people and appraisal system confuses between the two.

• For e.g... A 5-STAR person would still get a 5-STAR rating in a year, even though his variable pay may be close to 0 as he did not achieve its targets. Similarly a person can be just a 3-STAR because of average scores he gets, but for that year he might have got 150% variable pay because of over achievement on his targets.

Talent Review (TR)/Career Path• Its recommended to have a Talent Review for senior people once the person comes to a lead

position or crosses 5-7 years of overall experience (this can be decided based on the organization)

• Inputs to TR

• All Scores for all Quarters

• Personal Diary of the person

• For Functional Heads, Qualitative from Functional Page as well

• Output prepared based on

• Strengths

• Improvement Areas.

• Training Recommendations

• Career Path and possible Next Role.

• YEARLY mandated discussion is recommended between person and its current SUPERVISOR, and discussion, actions and training needs put on the PERSONAL Page of the person.

Promotion Cycle

• A clear eligible criteria based on # of years of industry experience, # of years in the company, and minimum score is defined for each level.

• All eligible candidates will be thrown up by the system.

• At low levels you can also have a set criteria based on years and scores (consistent over last 4-6 quarters) and system can do an auto-promotion as well.

• For higher levels, it would be decided based on Talent Review, Qualitative Feedback and higher roles availability in system.

Awards

• All awards except SPOT and TEAM Awards will now be based on scores and given on Quarter basis

• Best BU Performer(s)

• BEST Performer in a Competency

• BEST Sales Person

• Consistent Performer for the Year – hence a Chairman Award

• And many more …..

“BEHAVIOUR will drive SCORES and SCORES will drive Awards, and Awards will motivate BEHAVIOR to drive HIGH Scores. As Scores are 360 degree person will start shaping up on all angles.”

How this will ALL Work• Move to a Mobile only Assessment System (an Industry First)

• App will first throw up all pending actions on the person, primarily the Ratings that the person need to provide to others.

• Once this task is completed, then only person can go to its “My DIARY Page”

• He also has options to comment on its own page, send qualitative comments to others, and also send comments on respective functional pages.

• Can also see a Trend of Scores for all previous Quarters.

• And much more … approval of leaves, trends for all reportees etc., etc……… once data is there, Analytics is the King.

Summary• Mobile based Lightweight Employee Assessment Program

• Qualitative instant feedback done on “My Diary” Page

• Quantitative Assessment done thru’ instant 360 degree feedback for task/project/Quarter.

• Quantitative feedback will evolve on quarter ratings, and hence overall ratings for the person, available instantly at End of the every Quarter.

• Increments based on last 4 Quarter performance.

• Promotions based on Talent Review, Qualitative FB and Scores over last 4 quarters.

• Awards- All AWARDS apart from SPOT and team, will now be based on RATINGS.

Usage of the Approach• The suggested approach, process and tools are based on my personal

point of view, and does not represent my organization view.

• You are free to adopt a part of full approach in your organization without any license or costs associated.

• Its my small way of giving back to Industry without expecting anything back in return.

• If you use any part, please to comment on your experience, and also share your changes, so that whole approach can be fine tuned and many organizations can benefit.

• Thanks to my Master Mr. Prem Rawat for teaching me concept of simplicity and how it can be a very powerful. Hope you benefit with the approach and help make your organization Fair, Inclusive and Transparent (F.I.T)

Together lets MAKE a TRULY FIT (Fair, Inclusive and Transparent) ORGANIZATION

Be the INDUSTRY first .. No nonsense, lets take a big LEAP.

ThanksKindly send in your comments/suggestions/queries to sandeepbagarwal@gmail.com