The best way to appraise the appraisal process is to see how it performs in your company. If you have been doing annual appraisals and find that this approach has not been working well, one possibility is biannual appraisals. However, you might end up with the same kinds of problems, but twice as many as you have right now.
Before making this kind of change, it is important to emphasize that conducting formal appraisals is a time consuming process for all who are involved. Be sure to take a careful look at the current system and review such components as the managers' training in this area, the appraisal forms, the role of goal-setting, and the employees' understanding of the process. Look also at the amount of feedback that employees receive between formal appraisals. There is a good deal of evidence indicating that annual appraisals can work very well when employees receive regular feedback along the way.
One interesting addition is to have one session to appraise employee performance, and a second meeting to discuss and finalize goals. Used in combination with frequent feedback, this approach eliminates many of the problems of traditional appraisals, whether annual or biannual, and helps set the stage for employees to meet their goals. And this is a key objective of appraisals in the first place.
| 
