[27/10/2023]
SOAR was first designed way back in 2005. Throughout its various upgraded versions since, one aspect of it has not changed, in that SOAR was designed to handle one annual appraisal at a time.
Logically speaking this is absolutely correct; but in practice we have experienced various situations where users have multiple open appraisals. For example, appraiser retired and Form 4 was never completed and appraisal just left open with no follow-up; or user had missed an appraisal (e.g. pandemic) and rather than completing a Form 5A, the user opted to have one appraisal meeting to cover two years' worth of supporting info, but they want to document them in separate appraisals on SOAR.
Currently, SOAR does NOT handle multiple appraisals well - workarounds involve a lot of manual intervention from various admin teams. The reason for this is because when an appraisal is completed (Form 4 signed off), the appraisal forms (including the PDPs) are wiped and reset to allow for user to start preparing for next appraisal. If appraisals are signed off in the wrong chronological order the "latest" PDP will be wrong.
One suggestion from the developers is that once Form 4 has been forwarded by the appraiser, we "lock" the appraisal forms (the draft forms users work on prior to submission) from further editing to prevent forms being accessed for a new appraisal. It can only be unlocked if the Form 4 is signed off or rejected.
We discussed the possibility of creating different instances of the appraisal forms per different appraisal creation (e.g. auto create a new appraisal in each fiscal year) but the time and effort needed to create this (and complicated workflows re CPD log) far outweighs our allocated budget and project time.
Have you had any experience on multiple appraisals on SOAR, or other appraisal systems? How best do you think we can resolve this issue?
Please let us know your thoughts before 8th November. Thank you.
[30/11/2023] Thank you for your responses, everyone who replied agreed that locking the forms was the best way forward. The developers will take this forward. Thank you.
This page was last updated on: 30/11/2023
