Performance Management and Appraisal

Performance Management and Appraisal is a five-day senior HR course delivered by Mars Training Centre in London, Paris, Dubai, and Doha, and online — designed for HR leaders, heads of performance, and senior people managers responsible for the design and operation of performance systems.

Few HR processes carry as much organisational weight or generate as much frustration as performance management. Annual appraisal forms get filled in late, ratings stretch credibility, calibration meetings turn political, and the people who are supposed to benefit — the manager and the employee — too often leave the conversation feeling worse than they entered it. Yet performance management decides reward, succession, development, and exit at scale. It deserves better design and better practice than most organisations give it.

Across five focused days, you will rebuild your view of performance management from the ground up — purpose, philosophy, system design, manager capability, and the analytics that show whether it is working. The programme is delivered by senior practitioners who have designed and operated performance systems in large organisations across multiple sectors.

What You Will Learn

• Diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of your current performance system.
• Apply the major schools of performance-management thinking, including continuous performance management.
• Design goal-setting frameworks that connect individual work to business outcomes.
• Evaluate rating, ranking, and rating-free approaches against your context.
• Lead calibration meetings that produce fair, defensible decisions.
• Build line-manager capability to run high-quality performance conversations.
• Manage low performance and underperformance with structured, fair processes.
• Apply core performance-management analytics — distribution, drift, fairness, manager effect.
• Make a credible case to the executive committee for performance-system change.

How You Will Benefit

You will leave with a complete, defensible view of how to design and run modern performance management, and a Mars Certificate of Completion.

Your organisation will gain an HR leader who can replace an underperforming performance system with one that produces fair decisions, better conversations, and clearer development.

Who This Programme Is For

This programme is designed for:

• Heads of Performance and Heads of Talent
• HR Directors with responsibility for performance systems
• Senior HR Business Partners advising the business on performance
• Reward and Performance specialists
• Organisation Development leaders
• Senior public-sector HR executives
• General managers redesigning team performance practice

The seniority floor is head of department and above. The programme is delivered in person over five consecutive days, and delegates receive a Mars Certificate of Completion.