Essay on Employee Evaluation and Its Practice

An appraisal is one of the most commonly used methods of formal assessment and is used to evaluate and assess the performance of an employee against agreed targets and objectives, with the aim of improving employee performance. Where an employee has been able to achieve their targets, the appraisal can be used to recognise successes. This often helps to increase an employee’s confidence and motivation and can lead to better organisational performance. Many organisations will use the outcomes of an appraisal to identify potential candidates for promotions or even an increase in pay. At the same time, an appraisal meeting may include discussions on underperformance, identifying why this has occurred and how this can be avoided in the future.

Formal employee appraisals provide a strong reinforcement of the corporate aims and values. It gives managers an opportunity to show employees how their individual roles contribute to the company goals and give feedback to the impact that the employee has on those goals. It also provides management with a solid forum for

A Performance-Based Pay system is an increasingly popular compensation method used by organizations to increase productivity. A goal for all companies is to try and remain competitive and control costs, this is a reason for performance-based pay systems becoming more popular. This type of system attempts to link compensation to performance. (Gena Richter, 2002) These systems are directly tied to organization or individual performance and are most effective when based on objective measures of quantity or quality of performance. If we wish to have a direct impact on work motivation, it must be linked directly to the performance of desired behaviors. In order for to put this type of system into place, performance evaluations must be conducted regularly , as well as training and development for those with performance that isn't quite up to par. These additional resources will be necessary for our organization if we implement a performance based pay system. (William B. Bernathy, Ph. D., 2004)

By the end of 2015, at least 30 of the Fortune 500 companies had stopped using performance evaluations (Goler, Gale, & Grant, 2016). In fact, companies worldwide have begun to question their rigid ratings systems and once-a-year appraisal processes,

As stated by Peter F. Drucker, “Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.” Performance management is essential to achieving an organization 's mission statement and business goals, and also in attracting, retaining, and motivating qualified employees. There are many benefits and reasons why an organization should execute a performance management system. Performance appraisals establish the basis for qualifying, recognizing, and rewarding employee contributions. In this paper, I will discuss what performance management is, the problems with the current performance management system at my organization, how other organizations have succeeded in their performance management system and how I would advise management at my current organization to improve our performance management system.

Within my setting a process we use to monitor, evaluate the performance of individuals and teams is appraisals. “All contracted staff should receive some sort of appraisal with their line manager” Daly M el al (2004 p.2070). Appraisals are good process for both managers and the staff team to openly discuss performances and quality of production and output at work. “Appraisals are regular meetings between employers and subordinate, providing a non-threatening routine occasion when work standards cam be discussed and suggestions for improvement can be jointly decided”. Sadek and Sadek (2004 p.134). To carry out a successful appraisal there is a few stages to make sure that all the correct

At too many organizations, the performance appraisal has degenerated into a mere formality. Employers and employees are jointly complicit, dutifully sitting across from one another but simply going through the motions, ticking off goals and targets achieved over the past 12 months, those that weren’t, and a new set of goals and targets for the next 12 months. As performance management tools, these by-the-numbers appraisals don’t hold much value for most companies, and they do little to raise employee engagement, commitment or satisfaction levels. However, rather than simply abandoning performance appraisals altogether, as some have implied, a growing number of employers are turning around this state of affairs. They’re reinventing performance reviews and reaping substantial rewards.

Performance appraisal is an evaluation and grading exercise undertaken in organizations to achieve several objectives such as employee motivation, identification of training needs, rewards and remuneration, employee development through feedback etc. [Fig. 1]. All methods for performance appraisal have several advantages and disadvantages based on location of the firm, socio-economic environment, vision and mission of the firm, organizational structure and other factors. Organizations in different industrial sectors may have different focus areas of work and different values and thus, expectations from employees vary across sectors.

Forced ranking also known as the ‘stacking system’ is a performance rating system that has arguable attracted more attention over the years than any other (Smither & London 2009). While this practice has been widely used by well-known companies such as GE, Sun-Micro Systems and Hewlett-Packard (Grote 2005, cited in Smither & London 2009) it has also been the subject of significant controversy given its rejection by companies such as Xerox and PepsiCo (Olson & Davis 2003). Forced ranking is a performance rating approach synonymous with relative rating (Smither & London 2009). This implies that rather than being appraised independently against a uniform set of performance standards employees are ranked relative to peer performance and slotted into a normal distribution bell curve or a quartile distinction (Grote 2005). This would for example identify employees in the top and bottom 25 per cent (Grote 2005) and enable managers to identify the worst and best performing employees in an organisation. The use of forced ranking as a best practice people management scheme will be evaluated in the sections

shown marked improvement or progress. Lack of personal performance growth would result in consequences for the employee including a probationary period or dismissal. Personal conflicts between manager and employee should not be reflected in the appraisal process. Manager accountability would be reflected by the performance of the employee; hence, an ineffective manager could as easily be discovered through the process as an ineffective employee could be. The process would actually be a system of checks and balances. Ideally, this would promote team players and identify any weak links. The goal of performance appraisals is utilizing the employee’s performance and their behavior or attitude. With correct implementation, the attitude and behavior will not be the issue or focus of the manager. “For any performance improvement to take place, both parties must agree that improvement is necessary, that a plan for improving performance has been jointly formulated, and that periodic progress improvement sessions will take place, as needed. Thus, improvements in employee performance and attitudes can truly be enhanced.” (Peggy Anderson, 1998)

Performance Appraisals have been around for several years. Every year employees and managers both dread this time of year. The employees dread it because they are not looking forward to the feedback they will hear from their boss. The boss is dreading it because they are wasting time filling out the “standard” form, and basically checking the box that the appraisal has been completed. In our textbook it states, “Giving performance feedback is the No. 1 dreaded task of managers (Kreitner 283). Performance appraisals should not be a dreaded part of the job for the employer or employee. Employers this it is hard to remember all of the different aspects throughout the year, as well as finding time to present it to the employee. There are

One of the most misunderstood tools used by managers in today’s businesses is the performance evaluation. At its basic level, the performance evaluation is a tool that allows an organization to evaluate an employee’s past performance compared with a set of performance standards (Dessler, 2015). These evaluations may be used to determine pay and compensation, promotions, terminations, training and development opportunities, and more (Mulvaney, McKinney, & Grodsky, 2012). Although the idea of providing feedback on job performance seems simple, many organizations struggle to develop a performance evaluation system that is fair to employees, easy for managers to use, and that measures key areas of performance. A study of 100 large U.S. corporations showed that all of the companies used some sort of performance evaluation system, but half of the corporations were considering making major changes to their system and six percent of the firms said they were considering eliminating the process altogether (Lawler, Benson, & McDermot, 2012). Given the importance of providing feedback about performance and the potential organizational benefits of an effective process, eliminating performance evaluations is not likely to result in success for employees or the

There are numerous reasons why organizations evaluate their staff, the main reason being to track employee progress and performance compared to expected objectives. I do not contest that performance evaluations play an important role in assessing the overall performance of an employee. However, given the large leaps taken with regards to technology and organizational changes within organizations, I think that performance evaluations have failed to advance at the same pace. The disconnect occurs when performance evaluations are used as the only organizational quality control tool rather than a source of motivation for progress and career advancement. Though I think employees should be evaluated, I don’t necessarily believe that it needs to be done in such a formal manner. I’m an extremely positive minded person who is not particularly attracted to this idea of stocking biases and negativity all year long only to open the box on the day of evaluations. In addition, I have a particular interest and have had some training in the field human performance improvement, which makes me even more skeptical of the effects of performance evaluations because I know that a majority of problems linked to poor performance are linked to the complexity and/or lack of understanding of processes, tools and job aids. As such, evaluating a job performer without weighing his work processes and tasks is clearly ineffective. An alternative to the traditional performance

“Performance appraisals can enhance employee performance as well as advance the mission and goals of an organization. There are many advantages of performance appraisals if they are applied fairly, consistently and objectively. Performance appraisals not applied fairly can be counterproductive and even destructive to

The case begins with explaining force ranking as a performance appraisal. The case tells the reader about the creator of this idea and its intentions. The intent of the forced ranking system is to improve the performance level of an operation by getting rid of bottom ten percent of performers and hiring replacements who will perform at a high level (Gomez-Mejia,