Pitfalls of the employee appraisal ritual

At home there is a drawer in which I keep the children's school reports. As I have quite a few children and as each of them has been at school for quite a few years, the drawer is large and full.

In the past couple of days more reports have arrived. The new ones are just like the old ones and say "xyz is a lively member of the form" who has "made satisfactory progress in most areas of the curriculum".

The reports are always good in a bland sort of way. This is because all school reports are now good: no one dares to risk demotivating a child. Very occasionally buried among the bouquets I find a squashed tomato: "xyz must pay more attention to neatness and spelling" or "can be distracted in class".

I summon the child, who invariably leaps onto the defensive - a habit passed down through the maternal side of our family. "The physics teacher doesn't even know who I am," they protest. Shrug. Scowl. Sigh. Then the report goes in the drawer, preserved for I'm not quite sure what.

The pointlessness and sheer waste of effort in these school reports is quite something. However, it is nothing when compared with the pointlessness and waste of annual appraisals, which are glorified school reports for grown-ups.

In most companies the yearly appraisal process involves a sticky interview between boss and subordinate followed by the painstaking drafting and redrafting of an exceedingly long form. This bats to and fro and eventually gets signed by both and then is filed away in a drawer and usually forgotten about.

At least school reports serve a clear purpose: to tell the parent how the child is doing. With work appraisals there is no parent to inform. The appraisal is a contract between two people usually entered into in a spirit of embarrassment, false optimism and weary duty. It serves no purpose, and would be far better scrapped.

The first problem is the bureaucracy of it all. I have been looking at samples of recommended forms on the internet. All run to at least three pages, some to 12.

Then there is the tiresome business of trying to make what is subjective into something that can be measured objectively. Many forms invite employee and boss to grade the person on a scale of one to 10 on characteristics including "problem solving" and "integrity".

This is baffling. Am I a seven on problem solving but a six on integrity? What is the scale?

Third is the fanciful approach that appraisal forms take to the future. Employees are mostly expected to have at least three targets for the coming year. This is ridiculous. Anyone who is already doing an adequate job should surely be allowed just one target: to keep on keeping on. This has always been my aim. I see nothing wrong with it, but when I see it on my form it no longer looks refreshingly true. It looks shameful.

An even bigger problem with appraisals is the way they lead to fudge, just as school reports do but more so. The person doing the appraising may spend the rest of the year working with their underling in an apparently democratic team. This makes it almost impossible to say anything even slightly critical in the appraisal. And even if the boss tries, he will put such a sugary layer on it the employee may not notice. Any genuinely critical comment is likely to make the employee react as my children do, with the result that critical comments are usually watered down.

A falsely glowing report is not only pointless, it can be dangerous. When the useless employee suddenly gets fired, the flattering appraisal becomes a weapon to be used against the company in cases of unfair dismissal.

Larry Bossidy, the Mr "Get Things Done" of the ex-CEO speaker circuit, has come up with a better way. In the Harvard Business Review he lays out his idea of the perfect appraisal form. This takes up half a page and consists of two lists to be written by the boss. The first is headed "what I like" and under this could be written things like "team player" or "innovative".

The second list is "what can improve", which could include "impetuous" or "often fails to anticipate." Then the two discuss it.

This strikes me as another fudge. If the first column says "what I like", the second should be "what I don't like" - which is powerful and precise. By contrast "what can improve" is mushy and misleading. If you are impetuous, that isn't something that can easily improve. It's the way you are.

Bossidy says appraisals should be specific, not vague. I agree with this. The trouble is that he and I seem to be working from different dictionaries. He outlaws the term "hard worker" as vague, while welcoming "results oriented" as specific. How is this so? Results oriented means nothing at all to me, while hard working means a lot. He rejects "amiable" (which I like) and suggests "team player", which can mean whatever you want it to.

Bossidy's problem is that his system isn't nearly simple enough. My ideal appraisal is far simpler, and its Platonic form is described by a sketch from The Office. In it David Brent is appraising a guy from the accounting department. Brent asks him what he thinks his core skills are and the guy looks puzzled for a bit and then volunteers, "Accounts?"

This is how I feel. If I am a columnist, one thing matters above all. It is not whether I am results oriented, it is whether I can write columns. If yes, all well and good. If no, I need to be told about it long before my annual appraisal. - (Financial Times service)