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CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Performance appraisal is a powerful tool to help the supervisor meet the objectives of the department and organization.
The benefits of conducting performance appraisals include providing information necessary for improving performance and motivating employees. Performance appraisals also provide important records for the company.
Managers use this information for decisions on raises, promotions, and discipline.
It is impossible for different supervisors to evaluate employees in exactly the same way.
A supervisor may have a tendency to select some specific ratings or identify certain behaviors as problematic over others. Biases about specific people and groups of people can affect the appraisal process.
For example, supervisors who fail to keep good records may rely on recent events when evaluating an employee. A supervisor may give a more favorable appraisal to someone who is similar to the supervisor and appraise more negatively a person who is different from the supervisor.
Another bias comes from the halo effect, which leads people to generalize one positive or negative trait to a persons entire performance.
The goal of some appraisal forms is to make the process easy and consistent for all employees.
Ideally, the form focuses on behavioral performance and results to reduce bias ant increase objectivity.
The graphic rating scale is an example of this type of appraisal form. However, this type of form is susceptible to lack of consistency from supervisor to supervisor.
Another type of appraisal is the pairedcomparison approach, which measures the relative performance of employees in a group.
This form rank orders all employees to find the best employees.
Therefore, it reflects negatively on other employees.
The appraisal interview provides feedback to the employee and allows the employee to join in the process of performance improvement.
The interview should follow careful and thoughtful completion of the appraisal form, and should be in a private place with plenty of time for the employee to discuss issues raised in the interview.
The final outcome of the interview should be agreement between the supervisor and employee about what improvements need to be made and the method for achieving the improvement goals.
Performance appraisals provide information necessary for employees to improve the quality of their work.
It can help motivate employees.
Employees like to hear how they are doing, and behaviors that are evaluated or measured tend to get more attention from individuals.
Therefore, when it is useful to the organization to have special attention directed at a goal, it is useful to have that item on a formal appraisal.
For example, if the quality of a product or service is important, it is worthwhile to have a section on the performance appraisalon quality.
Another reason for conducting performance appraisals is that they provide important records for the organization.
They are a useful source of information when deciding on raises, promotions, and discipline, and they provide evidence that these were administered fairly. In the case of employee behavior or performance problems, an appraisal documents the problem.
Appraisal Process
Establish and communicate expectations for performance. Observe and measure individual performance against standards. Reinforce performance to provide remedies
Sometimes a supervisor needs to appraise personal characteristics, for example, an employees dependability or attitude.
While such ratings are necessarily subjective, the supervisor can try to base them on observations about behavior and results.
Reinforce Performance
To keep employees motivated and informed, the supervisor needs to tell them when they are doing something right, not just when they are making a mistake.
Reinforce good performance by pointing out to employees the areas in which their performance is good.
In areas where the employee falls short of the standards, he or she needs to know how to improve.
An effective way to help the employee is for the supervisor and employee to work together in solving performance problems.
To move beyond discussing symptoms to uncover the underlying problems, the supervisor can ask which of the following kinds of causes led to the poor performance:
(1) Inadequate skills.
The supervisor should see that the employee gets the necessary training.
In general, the behaviors or characteristics measured by a performance appraisal should be related to the job and to succeeding on the job.
The supervisor and others responsible for the content of performance appraisals should make sure that what they measure is still relevant to a particular job.
Ratings of performance should not be discriminatory.
That is, they should not be based on the employees race, sex, or other protected category, but on whether the employee meets standards of performance.
Types of Appraisals
Types of commonly used performance appraisal techniques include:
Graphic rating scales. Paired-comparison approach. Forced-choice approach. Essay appraisal.
Paired-comparison Approach: A performance appraisal that measures the relative performance of employees in a group.
This is a method of performance evaluation that results in a rank ordering of employees to come up with a best employee. This type of approach measures the relative performance of employees in a group.
Employees are ranked by comparing the first two employees on the list.
The supervisor places a check mark next to the name of the employee whose performance is better. The process is repeated, comparing the first employees performance with that of the other employees. Then the supervisor compares the second employee on the list with all the others, and so on until each pair of employees has been compared. The employee with the most check marks is considered the most valuable.
The paired-comparison approach is appropriate when the supervisor needs to find one outstanding employee in a group for a promotion or special assignment.
The fact that paired comparison makes some employees look good at the expense of others makes this technique less useful as a method of providing feedback to individual employees.
Forced-Choice Approach
Forced-choice Approach: A performance appraisal that presents the appraiser with sets of statements describing employee behavior; the appraiser must choose which statement is most characteristic of the employee and which is least characteristic.
This type of appraisal form gives the supervisor sets of statements describing employee behavior.
For each set of statements, the supervisor must select the one that is most and the one that is least characteristic of the employee.
These questionnaires prevent the supervisor from saying only positive things about employees. It is used when an organization finds that supervisors have been rating an unbelievably high proportion of employees as above average.
Essay Appraisal
Sometimes the supervisor must write a description of the employees performance.
The essay appraisal is often used along with other types of appraisals, notably graphic rating scales. They provide an opportunity for supervisors to describe aspects of performance not thoroughly covered by an appraisal questionnaire. The disadvantage of this method is that their quality depends on the supervisors writing skills.
The advantage of using this technique is that it is tailored to the organizations objectives for employees. It also tends to be less subjective than some other approaches. However, developing the scales is timeconsuming and therefore relatively expensive.
Checklist Appraisal
A checklist appraisal is a record of performance, not an evaluation by the supervisor. It contains a series of questions about the employees performance.
The supervisor checks boxes to answer the questions yes or no. The human resources department has a key for scoring the items resulting in a rating of the employees performance.
The advantage of this type of appraisal is that it is easy to complete. However, it has several disadvantages.
The checklist can be difficult to prepare, and each job category will probably require a different set of questions. Also, there is no way for the supervisor to adjust the answers for any special circumstances that affect performance.
Critical-Incident Appraisal
Critical-incident Appraisal: A performance appraisal in which the supervisor keeps a record of incidents that show positive and negative ways the employee has acted; the supervisor uses this record to assess the employees performance.
To conduct a critical-incident appraisal, the supervisor keeps a written record of incidents that show positive and negative ways in which the employee has acted.
The record should include dates, people involved, actions taken, and any other details that are relevant. At the time of the appraisal, the supervisor reviews the record to reach an overall evaluation of the employees behavior. During the appraisal interview, the employee has a chance to respond to each of the incidents recorded.
Work Standards Approach: A performance appraisal in which the appraiser compares the employees performance to objective measures of what an employee should do.
This type of appraisal requires the supervisor to establish objective measures of performance.
A typical work standard would be the quantity produced by an assembly-line worker. The supervisor then compares the employees actual performance with the standards. This approach works best with production workers.
Peer Reviews: Performance appraisals conducted by an employees coworkers. Peer appraisals are less common. In organizations that use teams, the members may appraise the performance of their team members.
An increasing number of major companies are having subordinates rate how well their bosses manage. The purpose is to give managers information they can use to supervise more effectively and make their corporations more competitive.
Harshness bias tends to frustrate and discourage workers who resent the unfair assessments of their performance. At the other extreme is the leniency bias, where supervisors rate their employees more favorably than the performance merits.
Employees who receive favorable ratings may see it as an advantage.
However, it cheats them and the department of the benefits of truly developing and coaching employees.
There are also supervisors who tend to select ratings that are related to the structuring of answers on the questionnaire.
A tendency may be to select ratings in the middle of the scale, which is called central tendency.
This type of bias misses important opportunities to praise or correct employees.
Proximity bias, or assigning similar scores to items that are near each other on a questionnaire, can result in misleading appraisals.
If the supervisor is uncertain about specific questions or wants to adjust a low score, he or she may resort to making random choices. This should be avoided by trying to apply objective criteria.
Similarity Bias: The tendency to judge others more positively when they are like oneself. The halo effect refers to the tendency to generalize one positive or negative aspect of a person to the persons entire performance, resulting in either a higher or lower rating than the employee deserves.
Finally, the supervisors prejudices about various types of people can unfairly influence a performance appraisal.
The supervisor must remember that each employee is an individual, not just a representative of a group. This is especially important in light of the EEOC guidelines discussed earlier in the chapter.
The purpose of holding an appraisal interview is to communicate information about the employees performance. An interview is an appropriate setting because if sets aside time to focus on and discuss the appraisal in private. It is a two-way communication with the supervisor and employee working together to devise ways to improve performance.
In preparation for the appraisal interview, it is also useful for the supervisor to review for himself or herself why appraisals are important for the organization, department, and most of all for the supervisor to be competent at the job. When the supervisor is convinced the performance is a positive enterprise and that it can be a win-win situation, it will be easier to do the interview.
When the supervisor and employee understand each others point of view, they should reach a decision on how to solve problems described in the appraisal.
At the end of the interview, the supervisor and employee are usually required to sign the appraisal form. By doing so, they acknowledge that the interview has been conducted and that the employee has read and understood the form.
After the interview is over, the supervisor continues to appraise performance. Training and coaching for improvement should ensue. The follow-up is an ongoing process.