Performance Appraisal

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

A performance appraisal is a review and discussion of an employee's performance of assigned duties and responsibilities. The appraisal is based on results obtained by the employee in his or her job,not on the employee's personality characteristics. Performance feedback is the most dreaded task of managers. This becomes a major threat to productivity because according to a recent survey, more than 70% of managers admit they have trouble giving a tough performance review to an underachieving employee. To some the cost is alarming and the effectiveness is questionable, but a performance appraisal can be effective and satisfying if systematically developed and implemented techniques replace haphazard methods.

Making Performance Appraisals Legally Defensible.

With the increasing legal actions by personnel against performance appraisal methods by a company, a human resource manager needs to ask themselves, "will my organization's performance appraisal system stand up in court?" To limit legal exposure from personnel's, it is better to ask this question when developing a formal appraisal system.

After studying the verdicts in 66 employment discrimination cases in the united states, one pair of researchers found that employers could successfully defend their appraisal systems if these systems satisfied four criterias, which are:

1) A job analysis was used to develop the performance appraisal system

2) The appraisal system was behaviour-oriented, not trait oriented

3) Performance evaluators followed specific written instructions when conducting appraisals

4) Evaluators reviewed the results of the appraisal with the ratees.

Performance Appraisal Techniques:

The following are some of the appraisal techniques used by organization's:

• Goal setting: In relations to management by objective,goals are set at an earlier date and the performance is evaluated in terms of the set goals and objectives. This is a comparatively strong technique if desired outcomes are clearly linked to specific behaviour.

• Graphic rating scales: Personnel traits or behaviour could be rated on incremental scales. For example dilligence could be rated on a 1-5 with 1 representing the lowest possible,and 5 the highest possible.

• Written essays: In this appraisal technique, managers describe the performance of employees in narrative form.

• Weighted Checklists: Evaluators check appropriate adjectives or behavioural descriptions that have predetermined weights. The weights,which gauge the relative importance of the randomly mixed items on the checklist,are usually unknown to the evaluator.

• Multirater Appraisal: it is a diverse array of nontraditional appraisal techniques involving more than one rater of the focal person's performance.

• Rankings/Comparisons: This appraisal technique involves a comparison between coworkers in a sub unit and they are ranked in a head to head fashion according to specified accomplishments or job behaviour.