I just responded to a post on CIPD regarding designing a performance apprasial form.  Just in case you don't avidly read CIPD forums ! I thought I'd outline my response here.

"In broad principle, I would follow the following process

• What purposes has the form got to serve (rightly or wrongly the performance appraisal form is important to the organisation for a variety of reasons), e.g.

• Record objectives for later reference
• Cascading of organisational objectives / goals
• Identify individual training needs
• Assign a grade for performance related pay purposes
• Identify the competencies that you wish employees to be strong in
• Gain c.v. like information for internal recruitment
• Identify high flyers etc.

• Decide now whether the form/process can deliver all of this
• Begin to design the form content - go for completeness initially.  I'd be surprised if a couple of other organisations wouldn't give you their forms to give you a flavour of what people capture and to get some ideas going on how best to garner the infromation
• Look more at the performance review process than the performance appraisal form.  The form only needs to capture the salient parts of the conversation on performance, objectives or development.  So, a nicely laid out form with a couple of opportunities to add free text is more likely to be completed than endless free text options.
• Get a small number of people involved to review your proposal - I don't know the size of your organisation.  If it is large, then do this earlier
  • HR
  • Training
  • Manager(s)
  • Appraisee(s)
• Start to look at the communication process....ok, I'm starting to go off your original topic."

I'm currently writing a white paper on performance appraisals - you can register to receive our newsletters from this blog or our website - and this will be a starting point for me.  It doesn't feel complete yet, but it's not the worst start on getting the performance review form designed.

Brendan