How Can We Start a Fair Performance Appraisal Without Traditional Hierarchies?

Guidance for Performance Appraisal

I am working in a reputed IT firm. As per my company culture, everyone is a boss here, which means we are not reporting to any manager. We are directly interacting with the CEO. We don't have a hierarchy. We want to start a proper appraisal function where we can judge ourselves, our peers, and the company's performance.

Can anyone guide me on the same?

Hi, you could conduct a 360-degree appraisal in this case!

Regards,
Priya

Have you set KPIs and competencies? If yes, evaluate against them. If not, kindly start working on KPIs and competencies like client focus, people development, result orientation, etc.

Besides KPIs and competencies, which need to be defined explicitly for each level on the evaluation scale of, say, 1 to 5 (1 being the lowest), your appraisal system should include 'Self-Appraisal' followed by 'Appraisal by CEO' (i.e., your workflow shall be Employee -> CEO -> HR Manager).

360-degree feedback would have been ideal in your environment (as proposed by others).

In addition to what I have mentioned above, your CEO may like to have a 'Relative Ranking' option for employees of the same level. This enables differentiating between the better among the best/worst.

I wonder how your organization is functioning or able to meet targets without respective hierarchy levels. It is mandatory for your CEO to define levels in the hierarchy rather than having discussions with every employee, which is not a good practice.

Rather than considering yourselves as a boss of your own, I recommend considering yourselves as team members. This approach will promote the concept of team building, resulting in teamwork, unity among team members, and also help you develop interpersonal skills, effective communication skills, and more. The beauty of considering yourselves as team members is that it will definitely help all of you to eliminate your egoistic approach/attitude, which is often seen in employees who treat themselves as their own boss.

Performance Appraisal and Key Result Areas (KRAs)

Performance appraisal may not help you judge your employees, but it can measure technical and functional competencies against defined targets. I suggest relating performance appraisal to your Key Result Areas (KRAs) for better analysis.

With profound regards