Performance Appraisal Notes

Ensures every employee works aligned with organizational goals and reaches their full potential (Maimunah, 2018).
An integrated, holistic approach ensures employee performance supports strategic goals (Dessler, 2017).
Processes for identifying, encouraging, measuring, evaluating, improving, and rewarding employee performance (Mathis et al. 2016).

Process of evaluating an employee's current and/or past performance relative to performance standards (Dessler, 2017).
Process of assessing how well employees perform their jobs compared to a set of standards and communicating results (Mathis et al. 2016).

Recruiting new workers: Managers gain a better understanding of worker skills, updating job descriptions and specifications, which aids in new worker recruitment.
Training and development: Analyzes employee strengths and weaknesses, matching specializations with individual strengths. Essential for designing training, future developments, and career programs.
Compensation and reward systems: Employee pay is measured and compared with organizational targets and plans. The resulting information is useful for decisions related to pay adjustments and rewards.

Recency effect: Overemphasizing most recent performance while ignoring earlier work.
Halo effect: Manager/supervisor rates someone highly because they like them or see them as similar to themselves.
Central tendency: Appraiser rates all subordinates as average across all criteria.
Prejudice and stereotyping: Biases based on race, age, religion, gender, etc.
Fatigue: Manager's judgement is blurred due to having to appraise all subordinates.

Managers/supervisors play a central role and are main appraisers.
Roles:
- Judge: assessing performance.
- Coach: providing constructive feedback and identifying areas for improvement.

May be asked to carry out self-evaluation.
Potential issues: some may be objective, some may overrate, and some may be too shy to appraise accurately.

Valuable source of information on aspects like communication, team-building, or delegation.
Feedback helps managers develop their skills in these areas.
Focus should be on managerial performance aspects subordinates can comment on.
More appropriate in larger organizations with sufficient subordinates.

Provide valuable feedback on performance, especially in teamwork situations.
Often aware of different aspects of a worker’s performance that managers might miss.
Evaluations tend to be more reliable due to multiple raters.
Potential bias: friendship bias.
Potential negative impact on teamwork if workers are competing for incentives and rewards.

Customers can evaluate performance of employees they interact with.
This evaluation is considered objective.
Customer feedback is crucial.
Organizations use customer appraisals to improve employee strengths and address weaknesses.

Most popular appraisal method.
Employer chooses key factors contributing to job success:
- Job-related factors: quantity of work, quality of work, attendance and punctuality.
- Personality and behavior factors: cooperation with others, initiative, adaptability, and patience.
Companies provide descriptions of acceptable/unacceptable behavior to aid appraisers.

The manager/supervisor writes answers to open-ended questions about subordinate performance.
Requires effort to find the right words to describe subordinates.
Not a popular technique.
Time-consuming: requires specific comments rather than general phrases.

After the appraisal interview/discussion, appropriate follow-up is needed.
High performers should be rewarded (bonuses and increments tied to performance).
For below-standard performance:
- The manager discusses the issue with the employee.
- Determine if more training or retraining is needed.
- Make necessary arrangements.
Counseling Employees with Problems
- Managers need to offer services to promote productivity.
- Helping employees perform satisfactorily may require a combination of non-directive counselling, advice giving, information giving, teaching, and coaching
The Appraisal Interview
- The manager and his subordinate must sit together to review the subordinate's past performance, set goals for the next time period, and discuss how the manager can help the subordinate overcome any problems he is facing in his work.
- Purpose: to give feedback to the employee on his strengths and weaknesses
- Managers need to be trained to handle employees’ emotions during the interview session
Ensure an appropriate appraisal method is used to achieve a fair system perceived as fair by employees.
After each formal appraisal, an action plan is needed to establish new objectives, remedial training, or other actions.