Useful Appraisals Rely on Documentation

What's that smell in the air? Leaves falling? Pumpkin-spiced everything? The NYC Marathon runners prepping for the big day?

No. It's the approach of Appraisal Season. Review Time. Annual Feedback. And if you haven't had good documentation all year, you're going to be feeling the pinch of bias and forgetfulness when it comes to reviewing your employees' performance over the last year.

To help with that, here are some valuable tips for reviewing the documentation you've collected or for planning ahead for next year (and keeping better notes).

Focus on behavior, not personality

When you document, capture your observations of what happened, not your interpretations of what you saw. For example, if you saw an employee roll their eyes in a meeting, write that down instead of "Pat thinks they're better than everyone else." The goal is to be as objective as possible, to the extent that what you capture could be verified by a reasonable person who experienced the same thing.

So instead of "Kim is lazy," write "Kim was late to the status meeting on Tuesday, 10/7" and "Kim missed the report deadline on 10/10, despite my reminding her twice that week" and "Kim has not volunteered for an assignment since May." Those are evidence-based observations and answer the question Kim would likely ask if you said she was lazy - "what are you talking about??"

Notice patterns, but avoid "always" and "never"

If you're tempted to document that someone is "always late," instead consider capturing exactly how many times they've been late in the last month or quarter. Similarly, if you're tempted to say that someone "never takes initiative," focus on the number of opportunities that have been presented and not taken.

In my experience, it's easier to deliver feedback that says, "I've noticed a pattern" or "I'm seeing a trend" rather than committing to an "always" or "never." Because once you make the absolute statement, they'll find that one time they did the thing that you weren't aware of.

Use specific details

It's a good practice to include dates, times, quantities, and specific details about the situation you're documenting. The goal is to prevent the employee from disagreeing because your feedback was too vague or you weren't able to provide examples. Especially at review time, it can be tempting to only give feedback around trends and patterns (which is fine), but they must be backed up by a string of examples, not just your gut feeling about something.

For example, "John is irresponsible" just isn't as specific as "On Tuesday of this week, John did not lock the samples closet when leaving for the day. On Wednesday, he spent an hour searching for the van keys while a client was awaiting a delivery. On Thursday, John left the samples conference room full of samples after his 9am meeting and the 10am group had to clean it up."

Request their contributions

I really wish Elon Musk hadn't required government workers to report on what they had contributed at the end of every week because that's actually a really great practice for keeping track of your employees. (Just don't do it with the threat of termination over their heads.)

You can do this by telling your employees the truth - you're keeping notes on them, and if they'd like to contribute to those notes, you'd appreciate it. Ask them to send along a list of "brags," or "successes," or "completions" for themselves or their teams. Don't punish them if they don't send them (but do note that they opted out). File these notes along with your own. I can't tell you how much easier it makes things when you get to the appraisal!

(Also, you can volunteer to do this for your manager, too. Just tell them that you read a brilliant article that suggested sending along your team's "completions" so your manager has a better picture of what, exactly, is happening on your team.)

Balance your documentation

It's easy to remember to make a note when things go off the rails or someone underperforms. It's much harder to remember to include the triumphs, successes, and overachievements. I've always stored my documentation in my email, so when someone sent me a complaint about an employee, a copy would go in their file. But if someone sent me kudos about an employee, that would go in there, too. (And if nobody was noticing my fantastic employees, I would write emails to myself to document that.)

Store them consistently

Whether you keep them in a Word file, a paper notebook, or in your email (or somewhere else), try to keep all your notes in one place. I'm personally fond of email, since we have it with us all the time, and it's generally more confidential than a Word document. Try not to store your documentation on your own hard drive, so if someone (not you) knocks over a cup of coffee (not yours) onto your keyboard (by mistake), you don't lose a year's worth of notes.

What other suggestions do you have for keeping useful documentation? Throw it in the comments!