Chapter 6

Purposes of Performance Appraisals

for employer: productivity, training needs, validation

for supervisor: goal attainment, personnel decisions (promotion, pay raise), feedback

for worker: improve performance, career advancement

Criterion Relevance

extent to which the criterion is pertinent to job success

Criterion Deficiency

extent to which a criterion falls short of measuring job performance

Criterion Contamination

extent to which performance appraisals include elements that detract from the accurate assessment of job performance

Criterion Usefulness

extent to which a performance criterion is usable in appraising a particular job

Objective Performance Criteria

measures of job performance that are easily quantified

Subjective Performance Criteria

measures of job performance that typically consist of ratings of judgements of performance

Supervisor Appraisals

done by supervisors, most common, reliable

Self-Appraisals

rating or evaluations made by the workers themselves, often a discrepancy between supervisors ratings of the workers and the workers' self-ratings

Peer Appraisals

involve coworkers in rating each other's performance, useful when collaboration is important for a team's success; potential conflicts among employees

Subordinate Appraisals

being used to assess those who are in management positions

Customer Appraisals

being used when customer interaction is an important element of a job

360-Degree Feedback

gathering performance appraisals from multiple sources, including supervisors, subordinates, peers, and customers

Rankings

performance appraisal methods involving the ranking of supervisees from best to worst

Paired Comparison

compares each worker with each worker

Forced-Distribution

assign workers to established categories of poor to good performance

Checklist

series of statements about job performance

Graphic Rating Scale

rates employees on important job dimensions using a predetermined scale

Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS)

uses rating scales with labels reflecting examples of poor, average, and good behavioral incidents

Behavioral Observation Scale (BOS)

rates key work behaviors based on how frequently they occur

Leniency Error

tendency to give all workers overly positive performance appraisals

Severity Error

tendency to give all workers overly negative performance appraisals

Central Tendency Error

tendency to give all workers a midpoint rating in performance appraisals

Halo Effect

overly positive or negation evaluation of a worker based on a single positive or negative characteristic or action

Recency Effect

give greater weight to recent performance and lesser weight to earlier performance due to the rater better remembering a worker's recent performance

Casual Attribution

process by which people assign cause to events or behaviors

Actor-Observer Bias

actor overattributing cause to the situation and observers overattributing cause to personal characteristics of the actor

Personal Biases

ratings based on personal experience, preferences, and beliefs

Cross-Cultural Differences

individual vs. group; egalitarian vs. hierarchy

Performance Feedback

process of giving information to a worker about performance level with suggestions for future improvement