Employee appraisals time comes round so fast and is such a thankless task. I’ll tell you why.

You are a small business. You have no HR department. You get frustrated with how much effort you have to put into employee appraisals compared to how much you get out. You’re doing all the work and not the employees that it is designed to help.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone and I’ve got a suggestion for you that will take the pain away.

You see, your employees will never be as passionate about your small business as you are. Not even the really motivated ones. Unless you give them half the company, why should they be? It’s just a fact of small business. Get over it.

Or give them half the company.

Some of your employees, the bookkeeper, the delivery chap or whoever, don’t want to be passionate. They just want an income. And then at five o’clock they want to go home and do something else. Does that mean that they can’t be good employees? Of course not.

For five years I slogged away with employee appraisals, spending endless nights planning and preparing. It was always such a battle to get some of them to open up.  I was the one making all the running.  I wanted them to develop and succeed more than they did.

And then one night, a flash of inspiration changed my thinking on employee appraisals for good:

Put as much effort into employee appraisals as each employee puts into themselves.

In other words, if an employee is giving you 100%, give him 100% back.  If he’s giving you 30%, give him 30% back.

Ridiculously simple. That way you focus your time on employees who most want it, waste less time on those that don’t and – more importantly – you’ll get more sleep.

How simple is that.

Of course, you still need to think about making employee appraisals useful and rewarding, but that’s another story….

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