A year at Mill Lane: The central bakery on Mill Lane has now baked for all three shops for a year. Priti, the head baker, runs it with six bakers who start at two every morning.
What Lena wants to know about each baker
- What they do well
- Where they need help
- Who could run a shift of their own
A feeling is not enough: She has a feeling about each of them. A feeling is not enough to decide someone's pay rise.
So Lena and Priti sit down with each baker. They look at how the year went against what was agreed at the start, talk it through, and agree what comes next.
Checking how well an employee is doing the job, against targets agreed beforehand, and talking it through with them is performance appraisal. Managing that all year round, from setting the targets to acting on the review, is performance management.
The year at Mill Lane, as a cycle
Agree the targets
In January Priti agrees with each baker what a good year looks like. For Tom: fewer than 2 loaves in every 100 thrown away for uneven baking. For Maya: learn to run the ovens alone.
Check in during the year
Priti watches the loaves come out and talks to each baker at the end of a shift: what went well, what to change tomorrow.
Review the year
In December each baker has a formal meeting with Lena and Priti. They go through the year's figures and notes, and the result is written down and signed.
Act on it
Training where a skill is missing, a pay rise or a promotion where it is earned, and new targets for next year. Then the cycle starts again.
What the bakery gets
- A clear picture. Who is strong, who is struggling and why, from evidence rather than a feeling.
- Training where it is needed. Money for courses goes to the skill that is actually missing.
- Fair decisions on pay and promotion. A written record shows why Maya is promoted and Tom is not yet.
- Better bread. Targets agreed with each baker pull everyone towards the same standard.
What the baker gets
- Feedback. Knowing what they do well and what to fix.
- Recognition. Good work is noticed and written down.
- A way forward. Training, and the chance to run a shift.
- A say. A time to raise what gets in the way: an old mixer, a rota that never changes.
An appraisal is not a telling-off: If the only time Tom hears about his uneven loaves is in December, the review feels like a trial. He hears a year of mistakes at once and has had no chance to fix any of them.
Look back to plan forward: An appraisal looks back in order to plan forward: what went well, what to change, and the help to change it. A meeting called because something has gone wrong is a different thing, a disciplinary meeting.
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In March, Tom's sourdough comes out flat three mornings running. Priti does not wait for December.
What Priti does
- At the end of the shift she stands with him at the proving shelf.
- She shows him dough that has proved too long.
- They agree he will set a timer.
- By Friday the loaves are right.
Two kinds, told apart by when and why: What Priti did in March is appraisal that goes on all through the year, to help the employee improve while there is still time: formative appraisal.
The December meeting is a formal, written review at a fixed time, usually once a year. It judges the whole year and sets the targets for the next one: summative appraisal.
| Formative appraisal | Summative appraisal | |
|---|---|---|
| When | All through the year, whenever it is needed | At a fixed time, usually once a year |
| What for | To help the baker improve now | To judge the year as a whole and set next year's targets |
| How formal | A word at the end of a shift, with brief notes | A formal meeting, written up and signed |
| At Mill Lane | Priti and Tom at the proving shelf in March | Lena, Priti and Tom in December, with the year's figures |
| What it leads to | A change tomorrow morning | Pay, promotion, training and new targets |
Formative: the gains
- Problems are fixed while they are small, not a year later
- Regular feedback, so the yearly review holds no surprises
- Builds trust between Priti and her bakers
Formative: the costs
- Takes a supervisor's time every week, not once a year
- Often informal, so little may be written down
- Only as good as the supervisor: a rushed one gives little feedback
Summative: the gains
- A written record for fair decisions on pay and promotion
- Every baker is judged on the same form at the same time
- Clear targets for the year ahead
Summative: the costs
- Once a year is too late to fix March's flat loaves
- Can feel like an exam, and stressful, when pay depends on it
- The manager may remember the last few weeks better than the whole year
Not one or the other: Most businesses use both. The conversations through the year feed the December review, so nothing in it comes as a surprise.
To tell them apart, ask two questions. When? Ongoing, or at a fixed time. What for? To improve, or to judge. Ongoing and to improve is formative; fixed, formal and to judge is summative.
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Priti is harder to appraise than her bakers. Lena is asleep when Priti's shift starts at two.
The people who see her work
- Her six bakers
- The three shop managers, Aisha, Kofi and Jonas, whose shops receive her bread every morning
- The customers who buy it
Feedback from every direction: So Priti's review gathers the views of everyone she works with: Lena above her, Aisha, Kofi and Jonas beside her, her bakers below her, and a few regular customers. Each fills in the same short form.
An appraisal built on feedback from all the people an employee deals with is 360-degree feedback: a full circle around the person.
| Who gives feedback | What they can see that Lena cannot |
|---|---|
| Her six bakers | Whether her instructions are clear, and whether she listens at five in the morning |
| Aisha, Kofi and Jonas | Whether the bread reaches their shops on time and the orders are right |
| Lena, her manager | Costs, waste and the targets agreed in January |
| Regular customers | Whether the loaves taste the same every day |
The picture is fuller and fairer than one manager's view, because no single person's opinion decides the result. But it is slow and costly: a dozen forms to collect and read, and someone's time to put them together. That is why businesses usually keep it for senior staff like Priti, not for every baker.
Before the meeting, the baker's own view: A week before his December review, Tom gets a one-page form: what went well this year, what was hard, what help he wants, and where he would like to be next year.
Self-appraisal: An employee judging their own performance, usually on a form the business provides, is self-appraisal. It can be part of the conversations through the year or of the yearly review.
360-degree: the gains
- A rounded picture from everyone who sees the work
- Less bias: no single manager's opinion decides the result
- Shows how a manager treats the people below her
360-degree: the costs
- Slow and expensive: many forms to collect, read and combine
- In a small team answers are hard to keep anonymous, so people soften them
- Colleagues may rate friends kindly and rivals harshly
Self-appraisal: the gains
- The baker thinks about his own work before the meeting
- Cheap and quick: one form per person
- He feels involved, so the new targets feel like his own
Self-appraisal: the costs
- People may rate themselves too kindly, or too harshly
- Few admit a weakness when the pay rise depends on the review
- Needs a manager's view beside it: on its own it is one opinion
Two mix-ups: 360-degree is not 'several managers'. It is everyone the employee deals with: the people below, beside and outside the business as well as above.
Self-appraisal says who judges, not when. Tom's form can feed a formative chat in March or the summative review in December.
Four ways, one small bakery: Lena now has four ways to appraise, and a small business cannot afford to do everything for everyone.
The real question: The question is not which type is best. It is which fits the person, the job, and the time and money the bakery has.
| Who | What fits | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tom and the other bakers | Formative through the year; a summative review in December, with a self-appraisal form beforehand | Their skills improve shift by shift, and the yearly review decides pay and training |
| Priti, the head baker | 360-degree feedback once a year, as part of her summative review | Her work is seen by bakers, shop managers and customers, not by Lena |
| Ade, who joined in June | Short formative check-ins every week or two | He is still learning the ovens; a verdict in December would come too late to help |
Even a well-chosen appraisal can go wrong. The problems are much the same in every business, and so are the fixes.
What goes wrong, and the fix
One person's bias
Priti gets on well with Maya and finds Tom hard work, so Tom's score slips. Fix: judge against the targets agreed in January, with evidence such as the waste figures, and add a second view.
Too late to help
A problem saved up for December has cost a year of bread. Fix: formative check-ins through the year, so the review holds no surprises.
Fear of the meeting
When the review alone decides the pay rise, bakers hide weaknesses instead of asking for help. Fix: talk about improving first, and about pay separately.
Time
Every review takes an hour to prepare and an hour to hold, in a bakery that starts at two. Fix: keep the forms short, and keep 360-degree feedback for the few roles that need it.
The same meeting can do either: A baker who is appraised fairly knows what good looks like, gets the training to reach it, and sees effort recognised.
A baker who is appraised badly feels judged, hides problems, and may start looking for another job. How the appraisal is run decides which.
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How this comes up: Short questions on appraisal are tied to a case. Longer ones ask whether a business should change how it appraises its staff.
| Short question | Marks |
|---|---|
| Define a type of appraisal, such as formative appraisal or 360-degree feedback | 2 |
| Explain one difference between formative and summative appraisal | 2 |
| Explain one advantage and one disadvantage of a type of appraisal for a named business | 4 |
| Explain two disadvantages of extending one type to more staff | 4 |
The longer questions: The longer questions ask whether a business should change how it appraises its staff, weighing the gains against the time, the cost and how the staff will react.
The four-mark pattern
- Name the first disadvantage. 360-degree feedback takes a lot of time: everyone asked fills in a form, and someone must read and combine them all.
- Show it in the case. Each of the six bakers would be rated by Priti, the other five bakers and the three shop managers: 54 forms, from people whose shift starts at two.
- Name the second disadvantage. In a small team feedback is hard to keep anonymous, so people may not be honest.
- Show it in the case. With six bakers on one site, Tom can guess who wrote each comment, so the bakers may soften criticism or use it to settle arguments.
The trap: a disadvantage of any appraisal: 'Appraisal takes time and can be stressful' is true of every appraisal. The question is about 360-degree feedback, so each disadvantage must come from what makes it different: many people giving feedback.
Every point needs the case: Each point needs the case: the number of forms, the size of the team, the two o'clock start. If the sentence could be about any business, it is not yet an explanation.
Explain two disadvantages for Lena's Bakery Ltd of extending 360-degree feedback from its head baker to all six of its bakers.
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