Leading Impactful Appraisals: Set Your Managers Up for Success

Let’s be honest. Appraisal season is a tricky time. HR teams dread chasing managers to complete forms on time. Managers feel the pressure of appraising an entire team alongside their day-to-day responsibilities. Employees often experience appraisals as something done to them rather than with them, which can create anxiety about the feedback they’ll receive.

The idea of doing appraisals better isn’t new. What makes the difference is how they’re executed.

When handled well, appraisals become one of the most strategic conversations a manager can have. They create clarity about how individual performance connects to organisational priorities, helping employees understand not just what they do, but why it matters.

That’s the real purpose of an appraisal. Not to revisit past mistakes or complete a compliance exercise, but to align individual contribution, expectations, and direction in a way that benefits the employee, the manager, and the organisation – setting everyone up for success.

Here’s what impactful appraisals do differently.

‍

1. They move from completion to contribution

In many organisations, appraisal season becomes a race to complete forms.

Impactful appraisals start with a different question.

“What contribution do we need from this person next?”

That shift moves the conversation away from scoring the past and towards shaping future impact. They become a leadership tool, not a compliance task.

‍

2. They make the business impact explicit

When appraisals feel disconnected from the business, engagement suffers.

Strong appraisal conversations help employees understand:

• Where their work makes the biggest difference.
• How performance links to organisational goals.
• What really matters in the year ahead.

Clarity here drives alignment and performance far more effectively than generic objectives and KPIs.

‍

3. They connect individual effort to strategy

Impactful appraisals don’t just review activity. They help employees understand how decisions are made.

Managers should be able to explain what the employee’s work enabled at an organisational level, what problem it solved, and why it mattered at that point in time.

Over time, this builds sound judgement in teams and creates a shared understanding of what “good” looks like in the business.

‍

4. They handle difficult topics directly

Managers often avoid appraisal conversations because of what they might have to address: performance issues, pay decisions, or changes to ways of working.

Avoidance creates more tension, not less.

Impactful appraisals deal with difficult topics clearly, using evidence rather than impressions, and empathy without ambiguity.

Handled well, even challenging conversations build trust.

‍

5. They provide structured, fair feedback

Vague feedback undermines confidence and increases perceptions of bias.

Employees value feedback that is specific, consistent, and clearly linked to expectations, especially when appraisals influence pay and progression.

A structured approach doesn’t just improve the conversation in the room – it makes decisions defensible when they’re questioned later.

‍

If you want to help your managers lead appraisal conversations that actually drive performance, take a look at our course: Leading impactful appraisals.

Or, if you’d like to discuss what would make the biggest difference in your organisation, book a call.

‍