What is the traditional of performance appraisal?

Traditional appraisals help evaluate and quantify an employee's performance. Managers can use a numerical scale to
rate and rank employees as per their level of performance. Thus, it facilitates decisions regarding salary increments,
promotions, and other benefits based on resources' rankings.

What is a Performance Appraisal?

A performance appraisal is a systematic and periodic process of measuring an individual’s work performance against the
established requirements of the job. It’s a subjective evaluation of the employee’s strengths and weaknesses, relative
worth to the organization, and future development potential.

Performance appraisals are also called performance evaluations, performance reviews, development discussions, or
employee appraisals.
If you conduct a successful performance appraisal, you can get a handle on what the employee does best and identify
areas that require improvement. Appraisals also come in handy for deciding how to fill new positions in the company
structure with existing employees.

Performance Appraisals

Performance appraisals are an integral part of employee performance and development. Employees who get rewards for
their good performance are more likely to stay loyal, perform better every year, and even motivate others to deliver
quality performance. This is why it is important to measure employee performance in a fair and unbiased manner.
Generally, there are two types of performance appraisal methods- Traditional performance appraisal methods and
modern performance appraisal methods. Today, we are going to discuss traditional performance appraisal methods in
detail. Let’s begin

Traditional Performance Appraisal Methods

Generally, traditional methods of performance appraisal focus on employees’ ability to take initiative, leverage resources,
and perform tasks with innovation and creativity. Moreover, employees are also evaluated based on their leadership
qualities, interpersonal skills, intelligence, and integrity.

Three Basic Functions

Performance appraisal has three basic functions:

(1) to provide adequate feedback to each person on his or her performance;

(2) to serve as a basis for modifying or changing behavior toward more effective working habits; and

(3) to provide data to managers with which they may judge future job assignments and compensation.
Traditional Methods Of Performance Appraisal

▸Rating Scales Method

This performance appraisal method involves the use of a rating scale that spans from 1 to 10. In this performance
appraisal method, employees’ performance is measured against several factors including their attitude, timeliness,
efficiency, and interpersonal skills.

⋄ Useful For:

The rating scale is an effective appraisal method for assessing unique traits and behaviours within your workforce.

⋄ Pros:  Useful in considering ⋄ Tips To Implement:

 Helps in assessing
employee attributes and
how they relate to their
current role.
 They are structured and
standardized in nature.
 It is useful for comparing
employees against one
another.
 Helps assess salary
adjustments.
candidates for promotion.
⋄ Cons:
 Responses are open to
interpretation.
 The final rating can be
deceiving.
 Average results can be
difficult to interpret.
 Recent events can
influence answers.
 Attempt to be as objective
as possible when posing
your questions.
 Avoid asking subjective
questions.
 Clearly establish criteria
and expected outcomes.
 Limit your questions to
those that are behavioral
in nature.

▸Checklist Method
The Checklist method is one of the easiest traditional performance appraisal methods. Under this traditional method of
performance appraisal, HR prepares a checklist and forwards it to the manager. The checklist may include a list of
questions (depicting behavior and job performance of employees), and the manager has to answer them in just ‘YES’ or
‘NO’ form.

The manager analyzes the question and the employee and answers them according to their evaluation of the employee.
Questions in the checklist carry a numerical value based on their importance to job performance. Therefore, the
appraisal score is calculated by adding up the scores of all these individual factors.

⋄ Useful For:

Making employee performance easy to evaluate as their supervisors have to simply choose between yes/no.

⋄ Pros: ⋄ Cons: ⋄ Tips To Implement:

 Helps managers avoid  Doesn’t allow elaborate 1. Focus on objective

discrimination.
 Ensures clarity of
evaluation criteria.
 Helps the manager to be
objective in their reviews.
 Provides an organized
view of the performance.
explanations. questions that can be
answered in yes/no form.
 Time-consuming process.
2. Try to not put in a lot of
 Costly to prepare.
questions as it can be very
 Easy to overlook some time consuming.
important evaluation
3. Make sure that you don’t
factors.
include a lot of negative
statements.
▸Forced Distribution Method
This strategy is widely used in large corporations. It is predicted that employee performance varies widely within an
organization, with some individuals being more productive than others. As a result, with this strategy, the management
must distribute employees based on their performance over the entire bell curve. Some are exceptional, while others are
average, and still, others are at the bottom of the spectrum.

⋄ Useful For:

Creating an unmistakable separation between the performances of every employee in the organization.

⋄ Pros:  Encourages discrimination  According to the method’s

 Helpful in eliminating the
leniency of the appraiser.
 Highlights future front-line
leaders.
 Relatively quick and easy
⋄ Tips To Implement:
model to understand and
implement.
⋄ Cons:
 Does not work well for
high-performing
employees who are
introverts in nature.
among employees. core principle, teams that
perform better should be
 Can have a negative
rewarded with various
impact on innovative
benefits.
employees due to limited
categories of evaluation.  Appraisers are unable to
appraise employees at
their discretion; instead,
 All guidelines should be they must adhere to
communicated to certain guidelines.
appraisers in a precise
 In order to achieve
manner by the HR
internal equality,
department. Each
businesses should
manager should be aware
calibrate their
of how reviews should be
performance.
interpreted and what each
statement represents.

▸Critical Incident Performance Appraisal Method

The critical incident technique is a performance review method that examines an employee’s behaviour in specific
circumstances, both in which he did admirably and those in which he could have improved. A series of methods are
utilized to collect data and analyze it. The critical incident technique involves observing critical human behaviours,
abilities, and on-the-job situations.

⋄ Useful For:
In comparison to other approaches, which
may be highly objective and need only
rankings to assess employee performance,
this method is quite subjective.
⋄ Pros:
 It aids in the detection of
unusual events that might
otherwise go unnoticed by
other means.
 This method is
inexpensive and gives you
a lot of information.
 The viewpoint of the
respondent is taken into
account.
 Respondents are not
compelled to fit within any
certain framework.
 There are numerous ways
to apply the method,
including observation,
surveys, and interviews.
▸Essay Method
The management uses this strategy to produce a description of the employee’s behaviour and performance. In this
method, the review description contains all pertinent information, such as the employee’s mindset, job knowledge,
present performance, and potential for growth.
⋄ Useful For:
Giving managers the flexibility to focus on whatever they personally find important about the individual’s performance.
⋄ Pros:
 The essay method is far
less rigid and constraining.
 Allows the manager to
emphasize practically any
significant issue or
performance aspect.
 The method is fairly open-
ended and adaptable.
 Subjective in nature.
⋄ Cons:
 Many instances may go
undetected or be
inaccurate since incident
reporting is based on the
respondent’s perception.
 It’s possible that biases
will emerge in response to
recent events.
 The instances described
may or may not be
reflective of scenarios that
occur on the job on a
regular basis.
⋄ Cons:
 It takes a long time and is
tough to administer.
 A biassed essay could be
written by a manager or
supervisor.
 It’s tough to draw
conclusions about
organisational demands.
 From a business
standpoint, it is
unprofitable.
⋄ Tips To Implement:
 Begin by identifying and
reviewing occurrences
that happened during the
course of the job.
 The process of fact-finding
includes acquiring
information about the
incident from members.
 Examine the facts and
data gathered from the
participants by the
interviewer and determine
the concerns.
 Determine whether the
remedy will be able to
eliminate the cause of the
problem that has been
discovered.
⋄ Tips To Implement:
 Make sure to keep the
evaluation essay short and
crisp in content.
 Try to highlight the
weaknesses and strengths
of the employee.
 Avoid the usage of any
flowery language.
 Divide your remarks into
several pointers, making
them easy to analyze.
▸Paired Comparison Method
Employees are evaluated using this method based on any single attribute. Each employee is compared to others on a
one-to-one basis, in pairs, based on a particular quality/attribute, for example, creativity. The formula N (N-1)/2 is used
to calculate the number of potential pairs. While the letter N denotes the number of employees to be appraised.

⋄ Useful For:

Companies that have a limited number of employees and funds.

⋄ Pros: ⋄ Cons: total of ten pairs to

 It aids the manager in
determining priorities
when competing demands
on a company’s resources
arise.
 In nature, it is cost-
effective.
⋄ Tips To Implement:
 It’s simple to pick the
most significant problem
to address or the solution
that will give you the most
benefit.
 It’s beneficial when the
priorities are unclear.
 This method is especially
useful when you don’t
have any objective data to
assess.
 Make a list of the options
you’ll compare (elements
as A, B, C, D, E for
example).
 By applying the formula
5(5-1)/2, there will be a
compare.
 Make a table with six rows
and seven columns.
 Compare element “A” to
elements “B,” “C,” “D,”
and “E,” and set “point” in
each column.
 Finally, add up the totals
of all the values for each
of the variables to
combine the findings. You
might choose to translate
these numbers to a
percentage of your overall
score.

▸Field Review Method

This method is based on the supervisor’s assessment of the employee’s performance, behaviour, and skills. The HR
professional invites seniors to respond to questions about the employee’s job and then evaluates the person based on
the feedback obtained from managers. This is an evaluation conducted by someone outside of the employee’s
department.

⋄ Useful For: Managerial level promotions or when a comparable analysis is needed.

⋄ Pros:  Observation of actual 2. Interview the employee

 Reduces the chances of
biased performance
reviews.
 Useful for managerial level
performance evaluations.
⋄ Cons:
⋄ Tips To Implement:
 Outsiders are generally
not familiar with
employees’ performance;
hence, the review might
be inaccurate.
employee behaviors is not and ask questions.
possible.
3. Record the responses of
 Highly time-consuming the employee.
process.
4. Based on the interview,
 The process is not very assign a rating to the
employee-friendly. employee.
5. Take the manager’s review
into account before
1. Prepare a set of
calculating the final
predetermined questions
rating.
to assess the talents and
abilities of an employee.
Drawbacks of Traditional Performance Appraisal Methods
These methods are highly subjective. The performance appraisal is dependent on the appraiser’s judgement, which is
subject to favouritism and bias. Because the reviewer has not gotten enough job training, he is unable to effectively
assess the performance of others.

These performance appraisal techniques have several flaws, which include the following:

Drawbacks Of Traditional Performance Appraisal Methods

▸Halo Effect:

This is one of the major drawbacks of traditional performance appraisal methods. When appraisers allow one significant
attribute to affect their performance evaluation process, the phenomenon is known as the halo effect. Regardless of the
employee’s performance, the appraiser assigns the same scores to all factors.

▸Leniency and Strictness:

The appraisers have different tendencies when it comes to rating. Some are more liberal, while others are more rigorous.
The evaluator’s habits mirror their rating of employees. You may have noticed that a lenient evaluator gives the
employees good scores, whereas the stricter one gives them low scores for their performance.

▸Central Tendency:

When the evaluator lacks appropriate knowledge about the employee and his performance and the time to devote to
the performance appraisal process, he may play it safe and rate all employees’ performance as average. This propensity
is a major flaw in the performance evaluation system.

▸Personal Bias & Favoritism:

The evaluator’s bias towards employees based on sex, religion, caste, color, or status is fairly widespread. This makes
objective appraisal difficult. The evaluator can be swayed by the member’s seniority and give him a high rating. Some
supervisors want to purposely rate their subordinates low so that they can outperform.