What performance appraisal is basically performance appraisal is to identify measure and manage

human performance in organizations so you identify the areas of work to examine for example
performance in teaching for an instructor then you measure or make managerial judgments of how
good or poor employee performance is for example measuring the teaching performance of an
instructor through enough number of student evaluations and you manage performance by helping
employees achieve their potential as well as providing praises and constructive criticisms for example
making the instructors take a seminar on effective teaching so we are going to look at each of these
three dimensions one by one one general question is

how we use performance appraisals there are three general uses including administrative
developmental and strategic users in terms of administration organizations use the appraisals to make
decisions on for example promotions and rewards so high performers might be rewarded with
additional pay for example and some of them might be promoted to higher positions in terms of
development organizations benefit from the appraisals to improve an employee's job skills for example
the the appraisals the results of appraisals become an input in counseling and training because they
indicate the areas an employee is deficient in so performance appraisals provide justifications for
various personal decisions that address administrative and developmental issues and lastly in terms of
strategy the appraisals help concretize general strategies they make abstract strategies material for
example a customer-oriented strategy can be materialized through performance measures that assess
courtesy and care on which employees should focus to be considered as high performers

İdentifying what to measure is the first step in the performance appraisal process you must identify the
dimensions that determine effective performance for a job for example what are the dimensions of a
teaching job at a university they might include a good command of conceptual material a balanced
interaction with students and an effective use of time so as you might notice this is an issue of check-
up analysis and job description which we discussed in chapter 2. you identify the dimensions of job
which will also become the performance dimensions of that job this process seems simple but it can be
quite complicated there might be many dimensions to be measured remember the example of a
teaching job you might add some other dimensions such as collaboration with other teachers in the
same area student preparation for national exams syllabus writing exam preparations and and so on
and each dimension should be described and the the description for an effective performance might
differ from managers or hr staff if a significant dimension is missing let's say technology used in
teaching employees who do well on that dimension will not be recognized or rewarded or if an
irrelevant dimension is included then employees might may perceive the whole appraisal process as
unfair and meaningless
 Measurement is the second step so measuring employee performance involves assigning numbers or
labels to an employee's performance on the characteristics or dimensions identified for example you
might assign a number from one to ten one indicating the lowest and then the highest performance
score or you might simply assign poor average good to employee performance and measurement tools
we can classify measurement tools or formats by the type of judgment required whether it is absolute
or relative judgment and by the focus of the measure whether it focuses on trait behavior or outcome

in terms of judgment type first in relative judgment the supervisor compares an employee's
performance to the performance of other employees doing the same job for example she orders
employees from the best to the worst in terms of performance or employees might be grouped into
poor average and good performers each group including those employees showing similar
performance levels relative systems have an important advantage they force supervisors to
differentiate among their workers so performance differences even if they are small are recognized
otherwise it is likely that supervisors rate everyone more or less the same not to confront employees
and this makes the appraisal system useless but relative systems have also significant problems first
relative judgments tell little about how great or small performance differences between employees are
so you cannot know exactly how much better the performance of an employee than that of the
employee just below him or her she is better but how much better is she we don't know second
problem related to the first relative systems do not provide any absolute information this is to say that
you cannot know how good or bad an employee in general is how good or bad an employee is in
general for example uh the highest performer in a team might be worse than an average performer in
another team so if the reference group changes the evolution might also change third relative systems
might force managers to identify performance differences among workers when no difference might
actually exist this is the other side of the coin then it's good it's good to try to recognize performance
differences but if there is no considerable significant difference then that's a problem your ranking will
probably cause conflict among workers as well as between management and workers who will
perceive the system as unfair so the system is considered as manufacturing performance differences
that actually do not exist and fourth relative systems look at an employee's general performance not his
or her performance in specific dimensions accordingly performance feedback will be ambiguous and
has questionable value you cannot give feedback to an employee about in which dimensions she is
good or bad and in which dimensions she should improve herself so the utility of relative systems is
not much in terms of employee development and insight because of these disadvantages these
problems relative systems are generally used for administrative not developmental decisions
 in absolute judgment in contrast to relative judgment supervisors evaluation of an employee's
performance is based only on predetermined standards there are certain requirements or standards for
each level of performance for example meeting essays targets can be considered as part of good
performance staying just below the target as average and exceeding it as very good so the supervisor
looks at the degree to which an employee meets the target and assigns the performance rating to the
employee and there are several dimensions like meeting sales target and are performance standards for
each so the supervisor compares the actual performance of the employee to the standard in each
dimension reach a performance judgment for each dimension and then give an overall performance
score to the employee for example by averaging the scores of all the dimensions so there are no
comparisons with other employees but the standards but of course you can compare the performance
score of employees once you complete evaluating all the employees and you can compare employees
across work teams and groups because the standard is the same for all that's one advantage also
performance feedback is more specific and useful because you rate each job dimension separately so
the employee knows the dimensions or areas of deficiency and can work to improve those areas lastly
absolute systems are much less likely to create conflicts among workers because they do not rank them
employees do not have to compete to get ahead of others so a more cooperative work environment can
emerge with absolute systems absolute judgments have also some drawbacks first a supervisor might
want to give the same rating to all his employees for social concerns for example for fear that different
ratings might damage group questions if there are significant performance differences between
employees then this will be unfair second problem is in the case of relative judgments when the
reference changes the evolution might also change here the reference is the judge or supervisor not the
group so different supervisors might have largely different evolution standards or interpretation of
those standards for example a rating of five from an easy supervisor might actually be lower in value
than a rating of three from a top supervisor but the employee having five not three would be rewarded
which is unfair

in terms of measurement focus performance appraisals can focus on trait data behavioral data or
outcome data in trade appraisals supervisors make judgments about employees traits or individual
characteristics for example they might look at and evolate an employee's decisiveness reliability or
loyalty in different work situations or tasks trait ratings can be useful because they are a shorthand
way of describing an employee's behavioral tendencies for example reliability as a trade might
probably mean a reliable teammate that does not freeload on other team members one disadvantage of
trait ratings is that they are ambiguous traits might mean different things to different people loyalty for
example might mean to loyalties to a supervisor or to an individual task or department or to the
organization in general so which type of loyalty will be used in your evaluation that's a question also
evolutions are very much likely to be affected by supervisors personal biases an employee who has a
negative relationship with the supervisor might not be considered loyal to the job even if he performs
 extraordinarily so trait ratings are not so reliable another problem is to determine relevant traits for a
job there are many traits which can be related to an effective job performance decisiveness reliability
and loyalty for example all can be relevant for most jobs and there might be other traits so it is
possible to leave some important traits out in your revolution and this will of course be unfair for
employees with those traits showing those traits further you need to determine the degree of influence
of each trait in successful performance which is very difficult to measure so what will be the weight of
each trait in your revolution lastly and maybe most importantly trait measures focus on individual
employee not his or her performance an employee can show decisiveness but this may have no effect
on his or her performance for example she might consistently decisively provide customers with the
standard service specified by the company but at the same time she does not understand customers
changing needs so trait measures are not so helpful in providing feedback on performance added to
this is the employee might become defensive and uncooperative this is because by focusing on the
employee rather than his or her performance you actually personalize possible problems related to
performance and this might be perceived as an attack to the employee's personality and does the
employee might refuse to cooperate with you in the appraisal process

behavioral appraisals they focus on an employee's behavior so for example you do not measure
leadership ability which is a trade instead you assess whether or how much and frequent an employee
shows certain behaviors related to leadership ability which might include working well with
subordinates and coming to meetings on time behavioral appraisals have the advantage of concrete
performance standards remember the example i've just given in your appraisal you simply look at
whether an employee comes to meetings on time among other things of course to measure his or her
leadership ability so this is this is a very concrete measure easy to evaluate and for each up there are
such explicit concrete behavioral standards related to this concreteness is that employees are provided
with specific behavioral examples for poor or good performance for example being on time so they
know what is expected from them they also know what behaviors to avoid to be considered as a high
performer this concreteness also facilitates feedback as performance standards are more or less clear or
specific in some cases feedback is simply to remind an underperformer those standards and behavioral
expectations so you simply determine deviances from expectations in an employee who is want to
modify or change his or her behaviors in line with the standards lastly behavioral measures can be
developed with the cooperation of workers and supervisors because they better know what good or
bad behaviors are for a job and this involvement increases employees understanding and acceptance of
performance measures so performance standards are not only developed in an informed manner but
also become a motivator for employees who put their perspectives and labors into those standards
there are some disadvantages problems of behavior systems first of all developing behavioral
standards can be time consuming you need to consistently make observations and evaluations of
employees actual behaviors on the job then you need to determine which of them represent poor good
 or average performance and then you need to write explicit descriptions of those behaviors for each
level of performance second behavioral expectations might be very specific and not comprehensive so
this means that you expect very specific behaviors let's say being at work 15 minutes before an
important meeting and when you become so specific in behavioral standards you cannot be
comprehensive enough to cover many important behavioral dimensions for example being on time is
effectively excluded when you say being at work 15 minutes earlier so an employee being on time but
not 15 minutes earlier can be assessed as at least not a good performance in other words employees
may not show expected behaviors but still do well on the job okay third significant organizational
changes can invalidate behavioral scales for example automation can change expected behaviors
problem solving might be less important than understanding and applying instruction manuals some
point unchanged standards start to be counterproductive when employees insist for example solving a
machine breakdown without the help of the menu so behavior standards should be modified before
they become obsolete or counter product fault biased behavior expectations are likely to emerge if
supervisors simply translate their trait impressions into behavioral judgments their behavior
expectations may not be related to job for example let's say they have a certain opinion of leadership
such as being authoritative or making decisions individually and reflect this opinion in behavior
standards for managerial jobs and if it is an organization culture of cooperation those expectations will
not be a good measure

the last type outcome appraisals outcome appraisels ask managers to assess the results achieved by
employees such as total sales or number of products produced so they set goals for employees and
look at the degree of achievement of those goals outcome appraisals provide clear and unambiguous
criteria as in the case of quantitative sales targets or cost cutting targets as performance levels are tied
to numerical targets that are measurable objectively or more objectively there is less room for personal
errors and biases in outcome appraisals so it is easier to evaluate employee performance outcome
measures are also flexible you can easily change sales targets when market conditions change for
example if the market grows or if your organization goals are changed then you can also adjust
outcome measures for example if you start pursuing growth then you increase sales targets together
with outcome measures most importantly outcome appraisals can be easily tied to strategic objectives
through different levels of goals so we have given the example of sales outcomes tied to growth
strategy or if you want to pursue a strategy of cost effectiveness rather than service quality then you
might set cost cutting goals for each job and measure performance accordingly like other measures the
outcome measures are also deficient in certain respects first the outcome approach does not take into
account the factors beyond the employee's control but still effective in achieving or failing to reach the
objective for example the target number of units might not be produced when a machine breaks down
even if the employee is a high performance
 the second problem the outcome approach might result in a result at any cost mentality so employees
focus on certain quantity outcomes for example number of products sold might lead to ignoring
quality outcomes for example service provided to customers after the sale this will be costly to the
firm in the long run for example eventually customers will realize that necessary and satisfactory
service is not provided after the sale and stop buying the product

in terms of reviewers you must have noticed that it is generally a supervisor who evolates or rates the
performance of an employee but there are other sources of performance appraisals self peers
subordinates and even customers are increasingly becoming common source of appraisals very briefly
to go over different sources in a self review as the name indicates the worker rates himself or herself
so the worker can reflect his or her views in the appraisal process in a peer review workers at the same
level evolate one another and this is especially useful in teams where collaborative work is important
and in a subordinate review workers review their supervisors so working in a direct relationship with
their supervisors workers probably know about their performance as much as maybe more than the
supervisor or manager of their supervisors customers are also used as a source of appraisal and in most
cases experiencing a product or service directly customers are in a better position to evaluate the
quality of a company's products or services than supervisors and so the performance of the employees
lastly there is the the 360 degree feedback which is a combination of peers subordinate and self
reviews and sometimes customer appraisals so almost all groups views are reflected in the appraisal
and and a more comprehensive evolution can be developed

managing performance performance management has two components first it includes an appraisal
interview so the supervisor conducts an interview with the employee to provide feedback on the
appraisal and this is a discussion on the employee's performance and salary or wage which is tied to
performance so the employee is informed about why he or she gets the particular particular
performance score and resulting pay implications the second component is performance improvement
performance improvement is part of employee training and development

in terms of performance appraisals there are four components here to consider when trying to improve
an employee's performance first you need to identify or explore the cause of performance problems
and this is not an easy task because there might be external causes beyond the control of managers and
employees such as during economic decline or poor supplies also people tend to blame others creating
confusion regarding the causes for example employees might point to lack of supervisor support as the
cause of poor performance but still exploring the causes is an important task first uh it affects how to
interpret performance evaluations for example if a poor performance is a result of poor supplies then
the employee will probably not lose his or her wage increase due to the appraisal second if supervisors
and employees have different perceptions regarding the cause of problems let's say one blaming the
 employee's law effort and the other blaming lack of teamwork the conflict is likely so the causes
should be established with reasonable evidence to convince both parties to avoid the conflict the third
reason why we need to understand the the the sources the reasons of performance problem is the
causes affect the type of remedies the reasons affect the type of remedies for performance problems so
if there is lack of supervisor support an administrative remedy solution might be needed if there is
insufficient employee effort motivational solutions might be better so which major factors might be
behind performance problems

there are three ability factors motivation factors and situational or system factors in terms of ability the
employees might lack necessary talents and skills such as interpersonal skills for teamwork in terms of
motivation the employer might feel unsatisfied in terms of self-improvement or material rewards in
terms of situational factors there might be many problems several problems in materials quality
supervisor behaviors financial resources and core work relations all the three factors are important for
high performance if you fail in one or two high performance is unlikely for example making a strong
effort will not result in high performance if you have neither necessary job skills nor management
support or if you do not put forth any effort low performance is inevitable regardless of your skill and
management support once the supervisor and the employee agree on the cause of performance
problems

the next step in performance improvement is to develop an action plan to control the problems and the
plan depends on whether the causes are related to ability motivation or situation factors for example in
the case of ability problems the employee may be trained or transferred to another unit where her skills
are more appropriate in the case of motivational effort problems the link between performance and
rewards may be clarified for the worker to better understand and in the case of situation problems
work processes may be changed to ease stress or conflicts affected performance improvement also
requires empowering workers to improve their performance so you need to ensure that necessary
resources are available for workers so that they can solve performance problems for example if job
training is part of the action plan then you should make available all training resources such as a fund
to register the worker in a training seminar this will empower the worker who will acquire necessary
skills through the seminar and hopefully solve the problems or if better performance necessitates on-
the-spot decisions then you should give some decision making authority to the workers the last point is
feedback so you need to give the employee timely relevant and clear feedback on his or her
performance improvement process and you should focus on performance not personality not to
alienate the worker from the organization and job
 general challenges in performance appraisals the most common rater is is hello error this is the
tendency to rate similarly across dimensions we already mentioned this when talking about relative
and absolute judgments for example a supervisor might develop an overall judgment about an
employee and then adapt her dimensional ratings to that overall judgment if her overall judgment is 8
out of 10 for example she changes her ratings to 7 or 8 or 9 in specific dimensions to reach 8 in
average our supervisors might change all dimensional ratings to be in line with the employee's
performance level on a specific dimension that she that the supervisor considers important let's say
you as a supervisor think that being a team player is the most important performance criterion so you
rate a software engineer love on all three performance dimensions of quality of codes written quantity
of code return and interpersonal effectiveness which is related to being a team player even though her
performance is high on quality and quantity another type of rater is restriction of range error this
occurs when a manager restricts all of his or her ratings to a small portion of the rating scale for
example you might be inclined to give about 80 out of 100 to all employees for their performance so
you are not able to differentiate valve between the best and worst performers instructors also
sometimes make this error in the regulations not giving below a certain cut-off period to trump
projects for example raiders might also have their personal buyers that cause errors in evolutions they
might be prejudiced against women for example and rate them lower on average than men and they
talk about this when discussing diversity managing diversity lastly in terms of later errors there is the
problem of comparability or reliability in ratings across raters this is the problem of dissimilarity
between performance ratings given by various supervisors in an organization for example what one
supervisorconsiders excellent might be considered average by another for a particular task then there is
no consistency and fairness in evolutions liking is the second source of errors in performance
appraisals when your assessment of an employee's performance is influenced by your like or dislike of
that employee an error is likely the worst case might be to fall in love with the employee and give
consistently high performance ratings to this employee even if the employee is is a dump but in
general good raters tend to like good performers and dislike poor performers so recording actual
employee behaviors related to job performance might be useful to avoid to avoid the bias of liking but
still uh there's the problem of being selective when recording behaviors due to liking again if you like
employee it is more likely to record his or her positive behaviors or vice versa individual group focus
another issue jobs might be completed through teams for example and performance appraisals then
should have two levels to recognize team performance as a whole and team members individual
contribution to overall team performance if you cannot effectively assess performance at the team
level you cannot motivate employees to cooperate and work towards a common goal and if you do not
have performance criteria at the individual level team members are less likely to put the maximum
effort into the common goal and more likely to freeload on others work so there is the issue of
measuring and distinguishing between group and individual performance in teams so this is a matter of
balance between group and individual measures and rewards related to the balance let's say you
emphasize financial appraisals easy to measure at the team group level then you have problem of how
to assess individual performances of team members or if you focus on behavioral measures easy to
observe at the individual level then you have the question of how to evaluate general team
performance and if you involve team members in developing assessment criteria their criteria probably
reflect their specific performance rather than general p team performance areas suppose you are able to
distinguish between individual and team performances then at the team level you might have other
problems for example you need to take into account both process and outcome measures in teams in
teams achieving target outcomes is one side the other side is the social process to achieve those
outcomes so for a team as opposed to an individual employee social process is much more important
and should be based on stable cooperative interpersonal relations so there's a problem of balancing
outcome and process measures at the team level

last challenge is organization politics organization politics effect affect performance appraisals the
previous discussion so far is based on the rational perspective so this perspective assumes that an
employee's performance can be accurately measured if errors and biases can be addressed can be
eliminated so the goal of the appraisal system is accuracy accurate measurements appraisal criteria
should be clear in line with the goal of accuracy supervisors and employees are passive agents in the
process according to the relational perspective employees perform and supervisors simply rate or
evaluate supervisors can and should be trained to evaluate accurately and use their evolutions for
administrative or developmental purposes and in the rational approach supervisors make first
dimensional and then overall assessments based on their dimensional evaluations so letting the overall
overall assessment emerge from specific dimensions relatively objectively in contrast iteration
perspective the political perspective assumes that performance ratings depend on the agenda or goals
of the supervisors the goal is management or utility not accuracy so using the appraisal system for
some managerial purpose for example a supervisor might give a good rating to an average worker who
seems uncommitted hoping that she will increase her commitment with the good performance score in
line with the goal of management assessment criteria are left ambiguous in the political perspective so
the appraisal system can be bent and used for the current managerial agenda for example who is a
good performer is not clearly defined anyone can be a good performer depending on the current
agenda as in the previous example the political perspective also views supervisors and employees as
more or less active participants in the appraisal process for example employees actively try to
influence evolutions performance evolutions by developing interpersonal relations with supervisors so
liking appears to be a strategy not an error in this case and supervisors make first an overall
assessment and then fill out dimensional assessments to justify the overall so imposing the oval onto
specific dimensions so a question in which sectors are performance appraisals more rational why and
in each sectors are performing their places more political why in other words in which sectors
industries organizations.