''How did you do it?'' is what companies are asking its employees before appraisals

It's the time of appraisals and evaluation, the time that is both dreaded and waited for. While earlier, meeting goals was the only prerequisite for a fairly good evaluation, this year, you could be seeing a change in the evaluation process, as more and more companies are now looking at 'how' employees achieved the goals that they did.

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"At the end of the year, we don't just measure the output, we also want to know how you achieved your goals. It's alphanumeric in many ways. One part measures task output and the other how you did it. We have a consensus-driven process where an employee not only discusses what he or she has achieved in terms of financial outcomes, but also how he or she did it. The 'what' part of outcome would be pretty clear from the financial sheet that would tell what goals were achieved. The how part, however, is a matter of discussion and it involves a 360-degree approach," Vikram Bector, chief HRO at Piramal Group, told TOI.

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Employee behaviour is also becoming a parameter in the evaluation process. "An individual may have met all his or her targets, but destroyed all relations with the team. Such an individual would not be able to claim a top rating. If an employee is unidimensional in his/her approach, and only deals with the line manager without collaborating with others in terms of sharing recognition and teamwork, it is not an acceptable behaviour. As a matter of fact we have six Piramal success factors which serve as guide posts, as acceptable leadership behaviours," he added.

Other than the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, some companies are also asking 'why,' which means that the employees have to explain why they adopted certain measures to meet targets.

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Achieving results is one factor, but companies don’t think of it as the ultimate parameter on which an employee can be judged, since they have now inclined themselves towards measuring the future potential of these employees.

(Image source: European Commission)