How Can We Design a Fair Performance Appraisal System for Short-Term Projects in IT?

Dear Group Members, I am currently working with an IT company that has a staff of around 250 employees. Each individual employee here is not assigned to any particular manager, and a project manager is assigned as the manager for the duration they are associated with the project. The resource movement is very frequent, and usually, an employee works with a project manager for not more than 3-4 months. In such a situation, what could be the best way to design a performance appraisal system?

Thanks & Regards,
Roshi

It appears that your major problem is not Performance Appraisal but employee attrition. Your second problem could be a faulty organizational structure. Employee turnover could be due to various reasons, and one of them could be the lack of proper measurement of the work done. Quantifying the work helps in differentiating poor performers from excellent ones. However, to achieve this, you need to study the systems and processes of each department and then design the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Performance Appraisal vs. Business Performance

The key point is that Performance Appraisal focuses solely on individual performance. We need to look beyond and measure business performance. To do this, you must have a well-designed policy on the Performance Management System (PMS). There was a query in this forum about PMS to which I have responded. You can view my reply by clicking on the following link:

https://www.citehr.com/511936-pms-company.html

In the provided link, you will find additional links. I encourage you to patiently go through each link as it may help you understand how the lack of proper work measurement is impacting your organization.

If you have any further questions, feel free to call me on my mobile number.

Thanks,

Regards,
Dinesh V Divekar

Even IT companies with around 50 employees prefer the online approach today since managing performance, especially when there are multiple reporting managers throughout the year, is a complex task. This complexity arises both in terms of data collection and objective reporting.

You can perhaps choose any of the approaches I suggested and try them out manually. Maybe it will work if you can manage the process with the help of your staff! What more can I advise with my four decades of experience? Good luck.

Hi Roshi, Since you mentioned that each employee stays on a project for only 3 to 4 months, there should be a log created for every employee involved in a project by its completion. This log, in our opinion, should be synchronized with the annual performance appraisal to determine increments based on performance. The project manager who is managing the employee at that time should have access to the previous logs in coordination with the HR department.

As usual, performance appraisals consist of both the self-appraisal part as well as the supervisor's appraisal.

Trust this helps.