PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Performance Appraisal is the systematic evaluation of the performance of employees and to understand the abilities of a person for further growth and development. Performance appraisal is generally done in systematic ways which are as follows: The supervisors measure the pay of employees and compare it with targets and plans. The supervisor analyses the factors behind work performances of employees. The employers are in position to guide the employees for a better performance. Objectives of Performance Appraisal -

Performance Appraisal can be done with following objectives in mind:

1. To maintain records in order to determine compensation packages, wage structure, salaries raises, etc.
2. To identify the strengths and weaknesses of employees to place right men on right job.
3. To maintain and assess the potential present in a person for further growth and development.
4. To provide a feedback to employees regarding their performance and related status.
5. To provide a feedback to employees regarding their performance and related status.
6. It serves as a basis for influencing working habits of the employees.
7. To review and retain the promotional and other training programmes.

Advantages of Performance Appraisal

It is said that performance appraisal is an investment for the company which can be justified by following advantages:

1. Promotion: Performance Appraisal helps the supervisors to chalk out the promotion programmes for efficient employees. In this regards, inefficient workers can be dismissed or demoted in case.
   
2. Compensation: Performance Appraisal helps in chalking out compensation packages for employees. Merit rating is possible through performance appraisal. Performance Appraisal tries to give worth to a performance. Compensation packages which includes bonus, high salary rates, extra benefits, allowances and pre-requisites are dependent on performance appraisal. The criteria should be merit rather than seniority.
3. Employees Development: The systematic procedure of performance appraisal helps the supervisors to frame training policies and programmes. It helps to analyse strengths and weaknesses of employees so that new jobs can be designed for efficient employees. It also helps in framing future development programmes.
   
4. Selection Validation: Performance Appraisal helps the supervisors to understand the validity and importance of the selection procedure. The supervisors come to know the validity and thereby the strengths and weaknesses of selection procedure. Future changes in selection methods can be made in this regard.
   
5. Communication: For an organization, effective communication between employees and employers is very important. Through performance appraisal, communication can be sought for in the following ways:
   1. Through performance appraisal, the employers can understand and accept skills of subordinates.
   2. The subordinates can also understand and create a trust and confidence in superiors.
   3. It also helps in maintaining cordial and congenial labour management relationship.
   4. It develops the spirit of work and boosts the morale of employees.
   All the above factors ensure effective communication.
   
   
6. Motivation: Performance appraisal serves as a motivation tool. Through evaluating performance of employees, a person’s efficiency can be determined if the targets are achieved. This very well motivates a person for better job and helps him to improve his performance in the future.

Performance Appraisal Tools and Techniques

Following are the tools used by the organizations for Performance Appraisals of their employees. Ranking Paired Comparison Forced Distribution Confidential Report Essay Evaluation Critical Incident Checklists Graphic Rating Scale BARS Forced Choice Method MBO Field Review Technique Performance Test

We will be discussing the important performance appraisal tools and techniques in detail.

1. Ranking Method

   The ranking system requires the rater to rank his subordinates on overall performance. This consists in simply putting a man in a rank order. Under this method, the ranking of an employee in a work group is done against that of another employee. The relative position of each employee is tested in terms of his numerical rank. It may also be done by ranking a person on his job performance against another member of the competitive group.

   Advantages of Ranking Method

   1. Employees are ranked according to their performance levels.
   2. It is easier to rank the best and the worst employee.

   Limitations of Ranking Method

   1. The “whole man” is compared with another “whole man” in this method. In practice, it is very difficult to compare individuals possessing various individual traits.
   2. This method speaks only of the position where an employee stands in his group. It does not test anything about how much better or how much worse an employee is when compared to another employee.
   3. When a large number of employees are working, ranking of individuals become a difficult issue.
   4. There is no systematic procedure for ranking individuals in the organization. The ranking system does not eliminate the possibility of snap judgements.

2. Forced Distribution method

   This is a ranking technique where raters are required to allocate a certain percentage of rates to certain categories (eg: superior, above average, average) or percentiles (eg: top 10 percent, bottom 20 percent etc). Both the number of categories and percentage of employees to be allotted to each category are a function of performance appraisal design and format. The workers of outstanding merit may be placed at top 10 percent of the scale, the rest may be placed as 20 % good, 40 % outstanding, 20 % fair and 10 % fair.

   Advantages of Forced Distribution

   1. This method tends to eliminate raters bias
   2. By forcing the distribution according to pre-determined percentages, the problem of making use of different raters with different scales is avoided.

   Limitations of Forced Distribution

   1. The limitation of using this method in salary administration, however, is that it may lead low morale, low productivity and high absenteeism.
      
      Employees who feel that they are productive, but find themselves in lower grade(than expected) feel frustrated and exhibit over a period of time reluctance to work.

3. Critical Incident techniques

   Under this method, the manager prepares lists of statements of very effective and ineffective behaviour of an employee. These critical incidents or events represent the outstanding or poor behaviour of employees or the job. The manager maintains logs of each employee, whereby he periodically records critical incidents of the workers behaviour. At the end of the rating period, these recorded critical incidents are used in the evaluation of the worker’s performance. Example of a good critical incident of a Customer Relations Officer is : March 12 - The Officer patiently attended to a customers complaint. He was very polite and prompt in attending the customers problem.

   Advantages of Critical Incident techniques

   1. This method provides an objective basis for conducting a thorough discussion of an employees performance.
   2. This method avoids recency bias (most recent incidents are too much emphasized)

   Limitations of Critical Incident techniques

   1. Negative incidents may be more noticeable than positive incidents.
   2. The supervisors have a tendency to unload a series of complaints about the incidents during an annual performance review sessions.
   3. It results in very close supervision which may not be liked by an employee.
   4. The recording of incidents may be a chore for the manager concerned, who may be too busy or may forget to do it.

4. Checklists and Weighted Checklists

   In this system, a large number of statements that describe a specific job are given. Each statement has a weight or scale value attached to it. While rating an employee the supervisor checks all those statements that most closely describe the behaviour of the individual under assessment. The rating sheet is then scored by averaging the weights of all the statements checked by the rater. A checklist is constructed for each job by having persons who are quite familiar with the jobs. These statements are then categorized by the judges and weights are assigned to the statements in accordance with the value attached by the judges.

   Advantages of Checklists and Weighted Checklists

   1. Most frequently used method in evaluation of the employees performance

   Limitations of Checklists and Weighted Checklists

1. This method is very expensive and time consuming
2. Rater may be biased in distinguishing the positive and negative questions.
3. It becomes difficult for the manager to assemble, analyze and weigh a number of statements about the employees characteristics, contributions and behaviours.
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Performance Appraisal Biases

Managers commit mistakes while evaluating employees and their performance. Biases and judgment errors of various kinds may spoil the performance appraisal process. Bias here refers to inaccurate distortion of a measurement. These are:

1. First Impression (primacy effect): Raters form an overall impression about the ratee on the basis of some particluar characteristics of the ratee identified by them. The identified qualities and features may not provide adequate base for appraisal.
2. Halo Effect: The individual’s performance is completely appraised on the basis of a perceived positive quality, feature or trait. In other words this is the tendency to rate a man uniformly high or low in other traits if he is extra-ordinarily high or low in one particular trait. If a worker has few absences, his supervisor might give him a high rating in all other areas of work.

3. Horn Effect: The individual’s performance is completely appraised on the basis of a negative quality or feature perceived. This results in an overall lower rating than may be warranted. “He is not formally dressed up in the office. He may be casual at work too!”.
4. Excessive Stiffness or Lenience: Depending upon the raters own standards, values and physical and mental makeup at the time of appraisal, ratees may be rated very strictly or leniently. Some of the managers are likely to take the line of least resistance and rate people high, whereas others, by nature, believe in the tyranny of exact assessment, considering more particularly the drawbacks of the individual and thus making the assessment excessively severe. The leniency error can render a system ineffective. If everyone is to be rated high, the system has not done anything to differentiate among the employees.
5. Central Tendency: Appraisers rate all employees as average performers. That is, it is an attitude to rate people as neither high nor low and follow the middle path. For example, a professor, with a view to play it safe, might give a class grade near the equal to B, regardless of the differences in individual performances.
6. Personal Biases: The way a supervisor feels about each of the individuals working under him - whether he likes or dislikes them - as a tremendous effect on the rating of their performances. Personal Bias can stem from various sources as a result of information obtained from colleagues, considerations of faith and thinking, social and family background and so on.
7. Spillover Effect: The present performance is evaluated much on the basis of past performance. “The person who was a good performer in distant past is assured to be okay at present also”.
8. Recency Effect: Rating is influenced by the most recent behaviour ignoring the commonly demonstrated behaviours during the entire appraisal period.

Therefore while appraising performances, all the above biases should be avoid.

360 Degree Feedback

360 degree feedback is also known as multi-rater feedback or multi-dimensional feedback or multi-source feedback. It is a very good means of improving an individual’s effectiveness (as a leader and as a manager). It is a system by which an individual gets a comprehensive/collective feedback from his superiors, subordinates, peers/co-workers, customers and various other members with whom he interacts. The feedback form is in a questionnaire format, which contains questions that are significant to both individual as well as organization from performance aspect. It is filled by anonymous people. The number of people from whom feedback is taken can range from 6 - 20. The individual’s own feedback is also taken, i.e., he self-rates himself and then his rating is compared with other individuals ratings. Self ratings compel the individual to sit down and think about his own strengths and weaknesses. The primary aim of a 360 degree feedback is to assist an individual to identify his strengths and build upon them, to recognize priority fields of improvement, to encourage communication and people’s participation at all levels in an

organization, to examine the acceptance of any change by the employees in an organization and to promote self-development in an individual. It must be noted that the assessment of individual by other people is subjective. A 360-degree feedback is challenging, promoting and analytical. It should not be regarded as ultimate and concluding. It is a beginning point. Self-assessment is an ongoing process.

360 degree feedback provides a comprehensive view of the skills and competencies of the individual as a manager or as a leader. The individual gets a feedback on how other people perceive and assess him as an employee. 360 degree feedback is beneficial to both an individual as well as organization. It leads to pooling of information between individual and other organizational members. It encourages teamwork as there is full involvement of all the top managers and other individuals in the organization. It stresses upon internal customer satisfaction. It develops an environment of continuous learning in an organization. Based on a 360 degree feedback, the individual goals and the group goals can be correlated to the organizational strategy, i.e., the individual and the group can synchronize their goals with the organizational goals.

The feedback must be confidential so as to ensure it’s reliability and legitimacy. The feedback must be accepted with positivity and an open-mind. The effectiveness of the feedback must be evaluated and analyzed on a regular basis.

360 Degree Feedback - Advantages & Pre-requisites

Advantages of 360 Degree Feedback

It is an effective medium for improving customer service and the inputs quality to the internal customers.  

• It encourages participation of all and thus makes HR decisions more qualitative.
• It pinpoints the favoritism and biases of the supervisors present in conventional appraisal systems.
• The employees find 360 degree feedback more acceptable than the traditional feedback approaches.
• 360 degree feedback is more impartial and objective than a one-to-one assessment of employee traits.
• It concentrates and stresses upon internal customer satisfaction.
• It broadens the scope for employees to get various says for enhancing their job role, performance, and views.
• It can act as a supplement and not replacement to the conventional appraisal system.
• It can be motivating for the employees who undervalue themselves.
• It encourages teamwork.
• It is more credible as various people give almost same feedback from various sources.
• It brings into limelight the areas of employee development as it confirms the employee strengths and identifies his weaknesses on which he can work upon.
• It creates an environment of trust and loyalty in an organization.

Basics and Pre-requisites of 360 Degree Approach

It is essential that an organization should be prepared for 360 Degree feedback. Not only the organization, but also the candidate (the employee) should be prepared for accepting it. Following are the essentials of an organization’s preparedness for the 360 degree approach-

The top level management must be keen to spend their time and efforts in giving feedback to their subordinates.

Status and ego issues shouldn’t overwhelm in the organization.

The subordinates and the peer both should assess and analyze the top-level managers and the top- level management should be open to accept their feedback.

Everyone in the organization should take the feedback considerately and constructively and utilize it for their development.

Ethics and moral values should be predominant in the organization.

The organization should encourage teamwork.

There should be self- learning in the organization, especially for the managers.

The personnel department of the organization should be highly credible.

There should be no politics in the organization.

Everyone in the organization should take the feedback seriously and should make an attempt to benefit from the same.

It must be ensured that the feedback is confidential.