Performance Appraisal Interview

1. How often do you schedule performance appraisals? The scheduled ones are once a year.  Sometimes, there are unscheduled ones as needed. 
2. How do you prepare for performance appraisals? We will send out a reminder about the performance review about 2 weeks before we meet with them.  We will remind them a bout the last time we met and about the goals that we had discussed previously. With new employees, we talk about their performance so far and set goals.
3. Do you agree that peer reviews are helpful and do you use peer reviews for each employee? We don’t do formal peer reviews.  The best way to describe it is that throughout the year, we will gauge how other people are doing. It’s an observable situation on my end - do we see if they are getting along well with their peers and handling their problems okay. 
4. When performing these appraisals, how do you communicate to your employee that this process is to help them improve rather than tearing them down by pointing out their flaws? In the notifications that are sent out, we make it clear that these meetings are not for reprimand or correction. It’s all about the good things in the last year, as well as addressing the weaknesses.  Just making sure employees know it’s not a punishment or reprimand for an action.  
5. What are the main performances you focus on while doing these appraisals? We don’t have a strict criteria for what we measure.  We ask what things they feel that they have done well in the last year and what projects they’ve been working on. It’s all driven by the individual - what kinds of things do they want to work on or if there is any feedback from management. 
6. Do you have your employees set goals for themselves during appraisals and if so do you have them try to meet them in a certain time frame? YES. Depending on the goal - yes time frame.  Set goals for when certain certification tests are scheduled and follow up. 
7. What are the main questions you ask your employees during the performance appraisal process? What did you do in the last year?  What things were good? What goals do you have? Wha are your current responsibilities? How would you like to see yourself improve in the next year. 
8. Do you have your staff meet with you for a performance appraisal or is their performance evaluation based solely off of observations from managers?It’s not strictly observation.  It’s observation, as well as them telling us what things they would like to do. We feel it would be inappropriate to measure because there are often unseen aspects of their performance.  We will ask them what sorts of things they feel they are doing well and we pair those with our observations. 
9. How much feedback do you provide during a performance appraisal, is it just a quick update saying here is how you’re doing or do you go into more detail? Little bit more detail, but once a year we meet for 15 minutes, so it can’t be that detailed. 
10. Do you tend to score employees highly or do you tend to score them lower so they will see they still have room to improve? We don’t do scores, but they lean towards the side of being encouraging and saying “you’re doing a great job, keep it up.”  There was one guy that did slower work, but good work. It wasn’t at fault, but it did require them to intervene saying to have them. 

The person that I interviewed was named Jordan who works for My Educator.  Overall, it was a great experience to see how someone outside of healthcare does their performance appraisals.  I think it's good that this company oversees a mix of observation, as well as individual interviews to check in with their employees performance.  I also think that I've learned that performance appraisal interviews aren't for reprimand, etc, but rather, for helping that person grow as an individual and a member of a team.