Performance Appraisals

In March every year comes that part of the financial year when everyone either gets appraised or is doing a performance appraisal. This is one time of the year when everyone from your boss to his boss has to conduct what they find least pleasing. Nevertheless, being a necessary evil, everyone has his or her own style of performance appraisals. I have myself been appraised by very good and pathetic bosses during the course of my banking career and have thought of some things that one must keep in mind while carrying out an appraisal.

Time-This is probably the only time of the year when someone reporting to you has a chance to voice his or her own opinion about various things in the organization/department. It is important that rather than your tongue doing overtime, the appraisee talks more. Listen to him/her; cajole him/her to speak out. If the appraisee agrees with what you are saying then either you or your department is perfect or they don’t have confidence in you to speak out. Since the former is an illusion, the latter is true in most cases. Ultimately, it is your failure as a boss.

Importance- It needs to be made very clear to each and everyone that the Performance appraisal is not a form filling exercise and that you mean business.


Direction- The performance appraisal is also a time when you give/get directions for the next year. It is important that the appraiser is very forthright and clear in what is required from the appraisee in the coming future. While change is certain, broad guidelines will remain the same. A performance appraisal is not a fault finding exercise and should not be treated as one.

Objectivity-Try and remove any element of subjectivity from the entire exercise, the more objective a performance appraisal is, more meaningful and less painful it becomes. While it may not be possible to remove all subjectivity from the process, it always helps if you are ready with numbers, both as an appraisee and as an appraiser. Even in case of soft skills, be ready with e-mails etc to make it clear of the guidelines given by you at times/alarms raised by you at times. Try and remove your likes and dislikes about the person as much as possible in the process. While this may sound clichéd, however the more it is adhered to, the better is the appraisal process.

Rating: In most of the cases in my professional career, the final word in the appraisal exercise is not the last one. Words like ‘moderation’ ‘bell-curve’ exist in every organization. While it may not be possible to give exact ratings for fear of embarrassment in front of the appraisee at a later date, you need to broadly tell and update the appraisee of where he or she stands. If you have reasonable amount of intellect, this is not a very difficult thing to do.

Finally, this is the time the poor guy after working his guts out throughout the year has been waiting for, it is important that he is reasonably satisfied at the outcome of the process. It is not humanly possible to satisfy everyone at the same time, if you are rational and objective; in most of the cases the objective is achieved. Finally a boss is only as good as his team; the converse is not true, if you need to run your business for the next year as well, try not to de-motivate the poor chap to death but to encourage him to do better.

The Financial Year-2008-2009 in retrospect

Today the financial year 2008-2009 comes to an end. This was the most difficult year at least in my banking career and resulted in a lot of changes both positive and not so positive both in personal and professional lives of bankers across. I try and recollect some of the things that happened in this financial year.

• Recession became the key word to be used in every party/meeting/discussion.
  Most of the professionals became experts in the macro economics of not just the country but globally.
• People reconciled to the fact that they will not get increments and bonus, no one cribbed when the banks/companies declared that they will not pay anything this year, owing to the recession. Everyone, on the contrary was happy that they are still on the company role.
  The hardest impact came when no mutual fund gave diaries/calendars on Diwali and New Year and no-one even asked them.
• Husbands and boyfriends saved a lot of money claiming to be victims of the global recession.
• The household savings increased as the fear of job-cuts loomed large.
• Men started spending more quality time at home, there was nothing to watch on CNBC and going out was expensive. Fights over the remote were less and women-folk were happy to watch their choices on TV.
• Ladies had to sharpen the culinary skills, not used for years now, as the family dinners at posh restaurants came down sharply.
• Suddenly every ‘sale’ mattered. Everyone wanted to buy things in one sale or the other. No one wanted to miss this great opportunity to save money. A weird example of company offers ‘buy one-get three free’ ‘buy two get 3 free’ etc.
• Even pubs and bars have been having strange schemes to encourage recession drinking.
• Business became even more difficult. Third party became zero and bottom lines were hit heavily.
• Good old banking that had Current and Savings accounts suddenly became popular. Something that made every seasoned banker happy. Bankers became less of equity brokers but unfortunately became more of Life Insurance sales guys since that was the only source of quick revenue.
• Everyone just started wondering who is next, more rumours circulated the market than even before.
• People who were working in the wrong industry were shown the way-out by their bosses. This will in turn help them in finding their calling in life.
• Indian banking system came out to be better and more robust than banking sytems of the so called advanced nations of the world.
• Business news channels and the technical and fundamental analysts who apparently were the only people other than god almighty to know how the stock market shall move made a fool of themselves and were last found looking for alternate professions.
• Suddenly loans and credit cards were out and usage of debit cards increased. Credit card companies that were reckless in issuance of cards to every Amar, Akbar and Anthony showed some restraint.
• Suddenly everyone was hit by recession, if you were not crying about it, people concluded that you definitely had a clandestine source of income. Even my presswala was hit by recession and started asking for advance more often.
• Real Estate prices saw a correction and what a correction it was, suddenly the broker turned builders were on the verge of collapse and the neighborhood broker who in wake of 5 years started traveling in Mercedes from Maruti was cut down to size. Properties in a godforsaken part of NCR that was selling at atrociously high prices was somewhat regularized. The great Indian real estate tamasha seemed to end.
  
  Thus ended this financial year that caused more pain and suffering in the financial world than any that we have seen in the recent past. It had its own gains and in the longer run will result in settling down of the economies of the world, made people more financially responsible and for an economy on the path of development, will be helpful in the longer run.
  
  Good bye 2008-2009