Preparing appraisals: your frameworks, your materials ready
A good appraisal is prepared, and preparing it mostly means gathering what already exists: the company's framework, the previous record, the objectives set. Your agent brings those elements together in your template, recalls the points left open and proposes the questions from your framework. Hosted in France: your employees' data stays with you. The agent expresses no assessment — evaluating a person rests with the manager, and with them alone.
Updated on
The record of the previous appraisal is recalled, along with the points left open and the objectives that had been set.
The assessment areas are empty: they are yours.
✎ Action · material ready, assessment yours
Judging whether they were met belongs to the manager: it concerns a person and may affect their career.
⚖ AI Act · no automated assessment of a person
A Blue Lemon Agent appraisal preparation agent brings together in your framework what already exists — the previous record, the objectives set, the points left open — and proposes the corresponding questions. It expresses no assessment and rates no one: evaluating an employee may affect their career and rests with the manager. It runs on local inference or is hosted in France: your employees' data is entrusted to no one, architecture designed to reduce exposure to extraterritorial legislation, location alone not being enough to guarantee immunity.
These figures describe our offer, not results measured at a client. How large the gain is on your number of appraisals is confirmed by a pilot.
What does an AI agent bring to preparing your appraisals?
The quality of an appraisal comes from its preparation. Gathering the framework, the history and the objectives takes time; the conversation itself takes no less.
! The issue
A well-prepared appraisal is one where the manager arrives with the history in mind and the company framework in front of them. The agent brings those elements together — the previous record, the objectives set, the points left hanging — in your template, so that the manager's time goes to the conversation rather than to reconstructing the file.
✓ Our answer
The material arrives complete and faithful to your framework, with the history recalled and the assessment areas empty. That is an essential distinction: the agent prepares the material, the manager makes the judgement. Local inference or an isolated resource hosted in France, logging: your employees' data does not leave the company and no assessment is produced automatically.
Data relating to your employees: sovereignty & compliance
Data relating to your employees is among the most sensitive a company handles. Here is how the architecture of our agents protects it.
Local inference
The agent can run on a machine belonging to your organisation: no employee data leaves the network, no record passes through a public cloud.
Hosting in France
Otherwise, a dedicated and isolated resource hosted in France, under French law — your appraisal frameworks and your records: processing and access within the European Union targeted by the architecture.
Reduced extraterritorial exposure
For data relating to your employees, the architecture aims to reduce exposure to the Cloud Act and FISA 702; being located in France or in the European Union does not, on its own, guarantee immunity.
Isolated resource
No pooling: an environment strictly dedicated to your company and its appraisal frameworks.
No assessment produced
The agent gathers and recalls; the assessment areas stay empty and every preparation is logged, with access restricted to the managers concerned.
AI Act: governed deployment
The agent is strictly in support; no evaluation or rating of an employee is automated; traceability and human oversight from end to end.
What depends on the architecture chosen These points are not general guarantees: they are settled deployment by deployment, in the quotation.
- The applicable location is that of the architecture set out in the quotation and verified before commissioning.
- Local execution is announced only for the configuration explicitly described and accepted in the quotation.
- The applicable isolation depends on the deployment mode set out in the quotation; no dedicated isolation is presumed.
- The events logged, their content, their retention period and who may access them are defined for the deployment chosen.
See the agent at work
4 real situations, taken from those that come up most often. Pick one: the exchange unfolds as it would in your organisation.
A scripted demonstration. These exchanges show how the agent behaves — its sources, its refusals, what it leaves to your teams. Nothing is sent from this page, no model is queried here, and the matters named are fictional. That is precisely what we promise your data.
The behaviours shown here — monitoring, automation rules, routing and reminders — are configured with you during deployment, from your tools, your rules and your thresholds.
The architecture points named in these exchanges — location, local execution, isolation, encryption, role-based access, logging — are not a guarantee attached to the demonstration: they are those of the architecture set out in your quotation, and verified before commissioning.
· Twenty-three employees have had no appraisal for more than two years against the frequency set by your procedure note of 12/01/2025. Four are beyond six years.
· Fourteen training requests made at appraisal have never received an answer, written or spoken. The oldest dates from 2022.
· Of last year's 118 records, 72 carry objectives dated the day of the appraisal. They were not set during the year: they were written during the meeting.
· Eleven employees have changed manager since their last appraisal. Their new manager does not have the previous record. morning-watch_4-flags.pdf4 flags · 14 requests with no answer
⛓ Source · procedure note of 12/01/2025, 118 records, appraisal register, org chart
What I record: fourteen requests written in the record's dedicated section. None carries any follow-up — no agreement, no refusal, no "to be revisited", no referral to the training plan.
What I do not say: that they should have been accepted. A request can be refused, and a reasoned refusal is an answer.
What I do record: of the fourteen, six employees restated the same request at the following appraisal. Four dropped it. And four had no following appraisal.
What that does to the coming meeting: the manager will reopen a form containing a 2022 request that was never answered. If they do not know before going in, they learn it in front of the employee — with nothing to say.
What I propose: the list of fourteen, with the date of the request and the fact that no follow-up appears. Before the meeting, not during it. 14-requests_0-answers.pdf6 restated · 4 dropped · 4 with no next appraisal
⛓ Source · 118 records, training section, appraisal register
Routing follows what can still be of use: an overdue frequency goes to HR, not to the manager — it is an organisation, not an individual fault; a request with no answer to the manager, before the meeting, never after; a change of manager to the new manager, with what the employee is entitled to see; an objective dated the day of the meeting to whoever designs the form.
With a chase: 7 days before the meeting, then the day before. Then a monthly summary: by department and type of gap, never by employee and never by manager.
Three operating rules, and the first governs the rest. The appraisal is written and signed by the manager, in the room — no rating proposed, no judgement from an earlier appraisal carried forward: an opinion that outlives whoever formed it can no longer be challenged by anyone. What I hand over before they walk in is complete: the objectives as they were recorded, with their dates, the training requests left unanswered and for how long, the history of reporting lines, and the date of the last appraisal. The manager walks in knowing; they no longer discover a 2022 request in front of the employee. And what you have not opened to me is invisible: I name it rather than assume it does not exist.
✎ Framework · no wording, no rating, no judgement carried forward
What I supply:
· the date of the last appraisal, and the gap against your note's frequency;
· what was agreed last time, quoted literally, and whether any follow-up appears;
· the requests the employee made and their answer, or its absence;
· training taken since, with dates;
· changes that have occurred — post, department, manager, working hours.
What I do not supply: an assessment, a rating, a proposed objective, a sentence to copy into the record, nor anything about how the person performs.
Why not the sentence to copy, though I am often asked for it: because an appraisal record is a document the employee reads, signs, and which can be produced later. A sentence I propose and a manager approves without thinking it stays written in their file.
What it changes in practice: in a dry run, managers went in knowing on average 3.4 facts they had not known — most often a request left unanswered. 5-facts_0-assessment.pdf3.4 unknown facts on average
⛓ Source · note of 12/01/2025, earlier records, training register, dry run
What I record: eleven employees have changed manager since their last appraisal. The new manager goes in without knowing what was agreed.
What I pass on: what binds the company — an objective set, training promised, a request made, a deadline announced. These are facts, and the employee knows them, having signed the record.
What stays in the file and does not travel with the handover: the assessments written by the previous manager — not the wordings, not the reservations, not the areas for improvement. All eleven handovers therefore start from facts, not from inherited opinion.
Why: an assessment is one person's judgement within a particular working relationship. Passed to a new manager, it becomes a reputation — and the employee restarts the year with a view they can no longer discuss with whoever formed it.
What I propose to the new manager: the full record remains available to the employee, who may show it to them if they wish. That is not the same as sending it. 11-changes_what-transfers.pdfCommitments passed on · assessments not
✎ Framework · commitments transfer, assessments do not
What that gives for employee F, four points to clarify on their preparation page:
· An objective set on 14/03/2025 — “take charge of commissioning at two customer sites” — and two commissionings recorded in their name in the field-service tool, on 06/06 and 12/09. Both traces exist; nothing states they are the ones the objective meant. The question fits on one line;
· A training request filed on 02/02/2025, and no written answer since — 14 months. The request is in the register, the answer is not;
· An attachment to a second team on 01/09/2025, and a job description unchanged since 12/04/2023;
· Two consecutive reviews carrying the same objective copied word for word, the second dated the day of the interview.
The form, and it is strict: every point to clarify holds three parts — the recorded fact with its date and source, the second fact that does not fit it, and the question to ask. The manager walks in with four precise questions and not one sentence to copy out; what they conclude is theirs, and theirs alone to write.
The figure that does not flatter me: across the 118 preparations of the 2025 round, 9 of my points to clarify carried a disguised conclusion — 7.6%. “Objective not met”, written that way, is an appraisal, and appraisal belongs to the manager. I was writing the gap instead of the two facts that make it.
What I changed: a point to clarify no longer goes out if it carries a verb of judgement — met, insufficient, satisfactory, behind — ; instead, the two dated facts and the question. Across the 118 preparations of the following round: 0. And the check is visible: every preparation page shows how many points to clarify it carries and where each comes from, so a point without a source stands out at once.
What the manager gains, measured on your round: 41 minutes of digging through files before each interview, 118 interviews — 4,838 minutes, that is more than 80 hours handed back to managers, and above all fourteen training requests left without a written answer that come back in front of someone. points-to-clarify_employee-F.pdf4 points, two dated facts each · 9 disguised conclusions out of 118, then 0
⛓ Sourced · 118 preparations, 4 points to clarify for F, 9 disguised conclusions then 0
What I record: 72 records carry, under "objectives for the year past", objectives whose entry date is the date of the meeting. They existed nowhere before.
What that means: the appraisal asks for a review of objectives that were never set. The manager writes them at the moment of assessing them — that is, already knowing the outcome.
Who I attribute the finding to, and why not the 72 managers: when a practice covers 61% of cases it describes the arrangement, not the people — reporting it by name would turn a form defect into an individual reproach, and the form itself would stay exactly as it is.
What I propose to whoever designs the form: that the section show objectives as they were recorded, with their date, and stay empty if there are none. An empty section is information; a section filled in on the day is not.
What it changes for the employee: they stop being assessed on objectives they discover at the same time as their success in meeting them. 72-of-118_written-that-day.pdf61% · a form defect, not a manager defect
⛓ Source · 118 records, entry dates, form structure
What I apply: the frequency set by your procedure note of 12/01/2025, which you opened to me. I quote no article of law: if the law provides otherwise, the law prevails, and that check is yours to make.
What I record: 23 employees beyond the frequency, 4 of them beyond six years. All four are in the same department, which has had three changes of head in five years.
What the delay is actually down to, checked: three heads succeeded one another and none inherited the register — that is the fact, and it is why it is not reported as an individual failing.
What I supply: the list with the date of the last appraisal, the history of reporting lines, and the department's name — to HR.
What I also propose: an alert three months before the due date, addressed to the manager in post that day, and not to whoever held it when the clock started. 23-employees_4-beyond-6-years.pdf3 successive heads · 0 register handed on
⛓ Source · note of 12/01/2025, appraisal register, reporting-line history
What that requires, and it is not negotiable: prior information to the employee (art. L1222-4 of the Labour Code), their consent given at that moment, and the ability to stop at any time, without having to justify it. Consent given at hiring for all future interviews is not consent.
What I then produce: what was agreed and the deadlines — never the conversation. The record carries commitments, not sentences.
What I tell you first: a professional interview is the moment provided for saying what is wrong. Where recording has been introduced, what gets said outside the form decreases — and that is precisely what an interview exists to surface. An employee who declines therefore has a good reason, and declining must cost them nothing.
What I do in every case, and it is the real contribution: I prepare five dated facts for whoever runs the interview — date of the last one, gap against your periodicity, what was agreed, what was done, requests left unanswered — and not one line of appraisal. 14 training requests written in the designated section never received a reply: that is the kind of fact that changes an interview. recording_the-employee-decides.pdfThe 3 conditions · the observed effect · the 5 dated facts supplied in every case
⛓ Source · art. L1222-4 · consent at that moment, revocable · 14 unanswered requests
What is kept: interview dates and deadlines, what was agreed and what was done, training requests and their reply or absence of one, manager changes, and gaps against your procedure note's periodicity.
What I pass to a new manager, and what I do not: 11 employees have changed manager since their last interview. The new one receives the commitments made and their state — they are answerable for them. They do not receive the appraisals written by the previous one: an appraisal that follows a person from manager to manager becomes a file, and it outlives whoever wrote it.
What the records revealed, and it says nothing about the managers: 72 records out of 118 carry objectives dated the very day of the interview. That is not carelessness: the form asks for something the organisation does not produce — annual objectives written elsewhere and available before the interview.
What I rely on for deadlines: your procedure note, not a text I would cite from memory. 23 employees are outside the periodicity, four of them beyond six years. what-you-keep_reviews.pdf5 items kept · commitments follow, appraisals do not
⛓ Source · your procedure note · 72 records of 118, 23 employees outside periodicity
Your case is not here? That is exactly what a 15-minute conversation is for. Book the free audit →
What does the agent actually do?
One agent, several kinds of appraisal to prepare. All these uses work in support, subject to your approval.
Material in your framework
Prepares the document with the company's sections and the corresponding questions.
Recalling the history
Takes up the previous record, the objectives set and the points left open.
Points to clarify
Gathers the factual elements recorded, without drawing any conclusion from them.
Need to go further?
These agents handle a different business process, with their own owner and their own price. They are added to this one.
In 15 minutes we identify the most relevant agent — without oversizing the project.
How much conversation time can a manager recover?
By gathering the history and the framework, the effort shifts from reconstructing the file to the conversation itself. How large the gain is depends on your volume and remains to be confirmed by a pilot.
The stages of your AI agent project
Audit & scoping
15 minutes to target the use case with the best return.
Quote or direct sign-up
A catalogue offer is bought online; a specific need gets a costed quote.
Design
We design the agent and its guardrails.
Integration & testing
We connect your tools to the agent, which is itself hosted in France.
Rollout
Going live and training your team.
Operation
Continuous supervision and improvement.
One package, one agent
An appraisal preparation assistant (frameworks, history, questions), installed and operated for you.
Setup + controlled subscription
- Installation, configuration and training for your teams
- Operation, human oversight, updates and support
- Sovereign hosting in France, a dedicated and isolated resource
All inclusive, no setup fee
- Setup included (installation, configuration, training)
- Operation, human oversight, updates and support
- Sovereign hosting in France, managed end to end
On site, you own it
- Hardware installed on your premises (you own it)
- French / European AI models run locally
- Secure remote maintenance (Pro support included)
Four guarantees that matter to your appraisals
Your questions, our answers
Does the agent assess employees?
Does the agent say whether objectives were met?
Who has access to the preparations?
Is the HR data protected?
Does it adapt to our existing frameworks?
How long does it take to deploy this assistant?
Other agents for human resources
Let's size up the potential in your appraisals
15 minutes to frame your frameworks and your safeguards — hosted in France, supervised, with no commitment.