🌴 Summer jobs you can do now to make performance review season easy

If you like the idea of a calm year end and everything sorted by mid-December, read on for Appraisd’s month-by-month plan for getting annual reviews done and dusted without the usual panic.

Supercharge your performance management this summer

Here’s something you can do each month to set yourself up for success with a new performance management process and platform.

(For a week-by-week plan in Notion that you can copy and use click here).

📅 July

Plan, make decisions and do the groundwork  

Take a breath, spend some time considering the big questions about what you want to get out of your performance management process. Use July to do some of the groundwork by reviewing what works and what doesn’t in your existing process. July is also a good time to establish a small project team to help you make the changes you want to see. We recently ran a webinar on this, but try to get broad representation from across HR, L&D, IT and legal to ensure things keep moving at pace. Establish a weekly call for the project team and spend some time this month seeing some software demos and deciding on the right solution so there is still plenty of time for configuration and launch ahead of your year-end.

📅 August

Configure, customise and test  

Once you’ve decided on a direction, the typically quiet month of August can be spent configuring your new system. The joy of a system like Appraisd is that is so configurable, it will be able to accommodate your process. Your Customer Success Manager will help you with everything from configuring objectives templates, configuring processes and setting up review cycles to agreeing on review workflows, configuring branding and administration rights - plus lots more. Your system is now ready for testing which can be a combination of internal and external testing and feedback. If you’re changing your forms, now is a good moment to look at last year’s and see what worked and what didn’t. For example, if there are lots of instances of ‘see above’ they’re the ones to look at first!

📅 September

Launch and kick-off your communications to employees  

Final steps ahead of launch include technical integrations such as single-sign-on and integration with your HRIS, both which your supplier and technical team should be able to manage between them. In HR, create a communications plan that will engage and excite your employees and managers (Appraisd can help with this!)., it’s time to start selecting and tailor review forms; with Appraisd you can access our complete form library that covers every type of performance conversation. Them when you're ready, launch is a very simple process with Appraisd. Appraisd's built-in email system sends out ‘Welcome’ emails to everyone with their login details. If you're running a staggered launch, we'll help you coordinate that too.

📅 October

Communicate the timeline and get line managers prepared

So, your new system is launched just in time, because for many companies October is when things really start to pick up. This is the time when HR should communicate the end-of-year timeline (Appraisd can help with this) and send out invitations for end-of-year reviews so that people hold time in their diaries. Make sure the timescale is realistic (based on the number of reviews managers will need to do) and work back from this to determine the timeline. Before meeting invitations go out, communicate with employees and managers about the window for reviews and key dates. This is also a good moment to provide guidance and templates for meetings (Appraisd can also help with this check out our guides and check-in templates).

📅 November

Time for ratings and reviews

Now we’re really in the thick of it - gather ratings and put them into the moderation or calibration process. This is easier if there has been some form of continuous performance management throughout the year. Regardless of whether you’ve used continuous performance management (we’re running workshops on this topic in Manchester and Birmingham 🏙), can you get all ratings into the system before reviews? This allows other parts of the process to roll on while meetings are booked in. Meetings will be taking place so the job for HR is to keep tabs on progress and check on which have been set up and held and who needs a reminder (Appraisd does this for you 😊).

📅 December

Calibrate, communicate and review your success

If your bonuses or promotions are linked to scores, December is the time for collating calculated scores, final ratings and possibly calibration. Once your system has gathered and collated the data, host your calibration meetings, generate final ratings and communicate them to employees via their line managers. Your work is almost done. Just before you close down, schedule a review and a feedback meeting for January to analyse how your process and system is performing. And that’s a wrap!

Can you really be ready for the end of the year?

Yes! Appraisd typically takes three months from go-ahead to go-live. Your Customer Success Manager will be there to help you with configuration, customisation, communications and roll-out. So, why not get ahead this summer?

Plus, you’ll get three months free when you sign up to Appraisd this summer. Find out more: https://visit.talos360.co.uk/appraisd-summer-offer/