What are you going to do when this employee asks you for specific examples of the behaviors that caused her to receive such a low rating? What are you going to say when she insists that she completed everything her supervisor requested?
The point is that you should not be the one who sits down with these evaluated employees. This responsibility belongs to the supervisors who wrote the evaluations in the first place. For you to step in at this point wastes your time, puts you in a situation in which you cannot provide adequate information or guidance, undercuts the supervisors, and generates feelings of frustration for the evaluated employee.
It will make more sense for you to give the supervisors some training in the performance appraisal process. Let them see the importance of setting goals with their employees and providing performance-based feedback and coaching along the way. Not only does this approach lead to improved performance, it also leads to a performance evaluation session where there are no surprises. If an employee has been struggling, he or she knows about the problem and has already been working with the supervisor to correct it.
There should be no surprises in the evaluation process, and it would be particularly surprising to have the review session led by someone other than the employee's direct supervisor.
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