The First-Time Manager's Guide to Performance Appraisals

by Diane Arthur

Book Overview

Conducting performance appraisals can be a daunting prospect, especially for new managers. With the same brand of accessible and sage advice readers have come to rely on from "The First-Time Manager,"... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814474403
• ISBN13: 9780814474402
• Release Date: August 2007
• Publisher: AMACOM/American Management Association
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.3" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 17 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Novice's guide to mastering appraisals

Using Diane Arthur's methods, you'll be able to turn an experience that both managers and employees often dread into a positive and constructive exchange. Her writing style is clear, concise and focused; she gets her points across with bulleted lists, sample forms and a list of 70 tips scattered throughout the book and then summarized in an appendix. getAbstract proposes Arthur's healthy focus on coaching, counseling and future development to new human resource managers and supervisors who must conduct regular performance appraisals.

It was exactly what I wanted

I received the book in a timely fashion and it was fairly priced and what I was looking for. Thank you for your prompt service.

Excellent advice for the newbie manager

First time managers usually have a lot of new things to try and learn very quickly. One of the most dreaded for most new managers is the performance appraisal. This is especially true if some of those you are evaluating were your peers before your promotion. Diane Arthur has long experience in HR and provides solid advice to the new manager. She divides the 16 short chapters into six "parts". You get advice that the real value in a performance review is not to pass judgment on last year's work, but to use that to manage the employee to grow and become more valuable in the coming year. She provides the 3 golden rules for performance reviews (I will let you read them in the book, but they make sense), and how you prepare for the next appraisal by coaching and counseling your employees throughout the year. Arthur then takes you through the preparatory process and how to get started on writing the review a month ahead of time so you have time to draft it, think about it, and rewrite it. That you have to gather documentary information from multiple sources to see things clearly and how to do it and why you should focus on objective measures rather than reacting subjectively to personal issues. You are then guided through how to write the review, the tone you should use, and the dos and don'ts of performance review language. She gives you a seven step format for writing them up including letting the employee have enough room to respond to your evaluation. The face-to-face meeting takes up four chapters because it is where the rubber meets the road. The key is to start right and create a supportive and comfortable atmosphere. The author takes you through what you should discuss to create a positive and constructive experience. You are also advised to speak no more than 25% of the time and to use active-listening (which she describes) the other 75% of the time. Arthur covers how to handle unexpected responses and difficult employees. I also enjoyed her chapter on the typical performance appraisal pitfalls. The last section covers performance appraisals for employees of differing performance levels and how to manage those with different work arrangements such as telecommuters. This is a useful, clearly written, and concise guide to this important topic. Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI