Dear Akansha,
There are 2 problems i see.
1) Favouritism
2) Buy in of HOD's of the the appraisal system
In the buy in problem,
1) you should have an open ended feedback from the HODs on what they like and don't like about the system. Consider their feedback. Ideally the appraisal system should be co-created with the HODs. This will automatically generate a buy in for this process.
2)The top management has to communicate the criticality of this process to their business.
3)KRA allocation should be also co-created and they should trickle down to the last level. (Eg: Sum total of KRA of sales team should add up to the KRA of the Head of Sales) .
4)The KRAs of the HOD's should also include successfully adhering to the HR processes such as the appraisal process. This should hold equal weightage as compared to his/her other functional KRAs.
This should help you get through seriousness wrt KRA and review mechanisms.
Now regarding favouritism, it’s a tough problem for which there is no easy solution — hence why favoritism is still with us. But there are methods that you, as an HR professional, can use to tackle favoritism.
1) start by ensuring that open and transparent communication policy on equal opportunities and open advertising available roles
2) you could try to quantify the negative impacts of the favoritism in terms of bad hiring decisions, reduction in overall team engagement, and lowered productivity. Move from an emotionally and based argument to an analytical and data-backed argument to highlight the monetary impacts of favoritism to HODs pushing them to adopt a more meritocratic process.
3) 2 HR for 550 employees is not ideal , however, to minimise favoritism in appraisals, one way is to increase the number of people who take the final decision on appraisal. These people should be non-aligned to and from other divisions, they can question the results basis merit and facts rather than on favoritism. There are no single decision makers now.
There are many other methods , however, everything cannot be explained on text. I run a training and counselling company and we consult on employee wellness and organisational process growth. You can get in touch for further help.
Thanks
Best Regards
Riti Sinha
Founder, Pharos Hub(
www.pharoshub.in)