For years I recommended that employees be asked to complete an appraisal of their own performance as part of the overall process. I recommended that they use the company’s appraisal form and assign themselves an appraisal rating. I felt that doing a self-appraisal would help build employee involvement, force some serious reflection on one’s personal performance over the year, and provide an additional source of input.
I don’t recommend that any more.
Here’s why. Several clients have told me that they’ve run into problems with contentious employees rating themselves as “Outstanding” (or whatever the highest rating is) and then saying to their boss, “Prove to me that I’m not!” Ouch!
There’s another reason why it’s a mistake to ask employee’s to use the company’s appraisal form to write their own appraisal. It confuses what the purpose of a performance appraisal is. Remember: A performance appraisal is a formal record of a supervisor’s opinion of the quality of an employee’s work. If the employee writes his own appraisal, he may feel that his opinion carries just as much weight as his supervisor’s. It doesn’t.
Some organizations routinely ask employees to write self-appraisals and end up with excellent results. Good for them! Keep it up! But if you’re not doing it this way now, be cautious about starting.
But it is wise to get employee input as one data source for the official performance appraisal the supervisor writes. See my previous blog post “Using a Good Stuff List” where I’ve discussed how to do it.
About the Author
Dick Grote is a management consultant in Dallas, Texas and the author of several books. His most recent book, How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, was published by the Harvard Business Review Press in July 2011.
