Employee Appraisals.  Essential business process, or complete waste of time?

In the next of my Ask HR series the question was – how do I avoid appraisals becoming a form filling exercise?  

For many businesses, they know that appraisals are a good thing, but they are often seen as an HR exercise, with no real value in the rest of the organisation. But that shouldn’t be the case. Here are some my thoughts – hopefully they answer the question!