Thursday, February 23, 2012

Appraisal Improvements ... !!

Its that time of the year again. APPRAISALS ...

Appraisals begets curiosity. And excitement. And disappointment. And? And some more ... maybe confusion, maybe uncertainty. May be not. Almost all of us pin so many hopes onto this one yearly phenomenon and end up being restless for the duration it lasts. When it's over, its either a pall of gloom and despair or an air of euphoria. For a lot of us, we are so concentrated on ourselves that we don't need to worry about others. For others (like me), its easier said than done.

To perform a good appraisal for the team is quite an annoying task. So many parameters and policies to adhere too. Sometimes, it defies common sense and yet you have to put up a brave face and justify practically every unjustifiable statement or observations you have made for someone. I hate this job.

This year I was going to perform the appraisal for around 15 folks. Most of these folks had worked with me during the year gone by and I had lot of comments to make for them. Both good and not-so-good. For others, they reported to someone else but since that someone else was no longer in the team, I had to take it up. These cases were brutal. I am not going to mention what transpired during these discussions or feedback sessions. Just one light incident that I found worthy to be jotted down.

For every individual, I carried a printout of my comments. The comments were categorized into 3 parts. Strengths, Improvements and Summary. Along with the rating of course.

Anees is a person who had joined the team in August 2011 and hence was comparatively new to the team. He was part of a team that used to sit adjacent to our team before that. So we used to interact with each other even before he joined my team. He is a jolly personality and always up for fun events within the team and cracking jokes. We have had several chats on Communicator that I don't feel like going into more details. For obvious reasons. :). Typical guy talk.

The current scenario is that he is resigning and will not be around starting March. I had given him a rating that he didn't deserve due to some stupid policy that the organization follows for a person quitting the job. He was due for promotion and had he stayed, his rating would have been completely the opposite. So much for policies. Crap.

During our discussion, we discussed his Strengths first and then his Improvements and the conversation went off quite well. I also made it clear why I had given him his rating. He was aware that something like this would happen and he did not accept the rating which was perfectly understandable.

At the end of any such discussion, I was asking each person to give me my own feedback too so that I can also improve. This was the highlight of the discussion.

In his own very sweet and innocent way, he said ...

Bass ek hi Improvement hai aapke liye ... quit Drinking.

And we laughed. I said ... Yes. Someday. When I am no more alive.

In the hustle and bustle of the most traumatic appraisal experience, came this moment which lightened it up a bit for me.

All the best Anees. Do well.

Cheers ... !!