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. The reality is that most appraisal systems in organizations today are very procedural and bureaucratic in nature and involve a lot of tedious form filling which typically takes more time than the conversations themselves. As pointed out by the late management guru and author, Peter Drucker, both managers and employees dislike the process. Managers loathe it because of the mounds of paperwork and the fact that they are set up in a way that requires managers to spend a lot of time criticizing others. Employees generally dislike the process because they know their manager is compelled to criticize them to justify any pay increase which is average or below average and because most
This shows that the periodic orientation programmes are not at all conducted to explain the objectives and other details of the appraisal systems. Item 3 have a mean score of 2.3, which is below average. This reflects that the managers do not spend time to discuss with their subordinate about their performance. For item 4 it was seen that the mangers do not take performance appraisal seriously (Table-1).
Appraisals are a positive way for an employer to let the employee know how well they are performing the duties that are assigned to them, and an appraisal is a good indictor of how an employee needs to improve in a certain job task.
In today’s business world, performance appraisals are still widely used, yet at the same time very criticized. One of the reasons appraisals are criticized is some feel that they are a waste of time and are not value added. Samuel Culbert, author of the book,“Get Rid of Performance Reviews” states, “This corporate sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities” (Culbert). He goes on to say that, “Everybody does it, and almost everyone who’s evaluated hates it” (Culbert). He feels that appraisals are worthless and should never be a method used for giving employees feedback. After doing more
According to Rebecca Saunders Effective Performance Appraisal when adjective are clear and set by both employees and manager together, and when they join monitor growth toward them, accurate and fair appraisals can also be guaranteed. The work of the employees gets well recognized for well job and gets recognition for poor performers learn all about different issues become out of control within the organization. However, it really do not matter what type of appraisal method or system you use, having a understanding of the support and successful appraisals this will help have its focus on all the positive, increasing the performances of all the employees within the organization as a whole.
Performance appraisals are used administratively whenever they are the basis for a decision about the employee’s work conditions, including promotions, terminations, and rewards. (Gomez-Mejia, 2012, p.223).
“When employees have goals, they tend to be more motivated if they also receive feedback about their progress” (Bauer & Erdogen, 2009, p.132).Both Nickols (2007) and Fallon and McConnell (2007) agree that performance appraisals are excellent tools that can be use to provide employees with feedback on their performance. “The goal of providing performance feedback is to help the rater solve performance problems to motivate the employee to change behavior” (Bauer & Erdogen, 2009, p.134). Nickols (2007) also believes that such appraisals also provide the opportunity to identify training and performance options and for employees to establish their personal goals. Further, “performance appraisals afford the corporation legal protection against employee lawsuits for discrimination and wrongful termination” (Nickols, 2007, p.14) Bauer and Erdogen (2009) state that when a supervisor uses the performance appraisal interview to give employees constructive criticism, encourage employee participation, and focus on the employee’s behavior , the employees tend to react positively. However,
Performance appraisals are a hot subject in management and organizations these days. Organizations rely on employees to complete business tasks in a timely and competent manner because their reputation may depend on the performance of its employees. It’s essential that organizations develop a performance management system to assist in evaluating their employees. The performance management system is usually used for annual employee evaluations. The performance management system can be performed in various formats such as rating employees on a scale of 1 to 10 or giving a rating of excellent, good, average, or poor. Now, that I have discussed what performance management system is, it’s time that I elaborate on an example of this system.
Annual performance reviews are not an effective form of performance management system to measure the employee’s performance because they can be biased, waste of managerial time, too sporadic to make a lasting impact, and can affect the employee’s behavior. All companies strive to be successful at meeting their company goals in a time efficient manner. As time goes on, companies are realizing the key to a successful business is happy employees. Companies must experiment with new methods to find the right process of evaluating employee performance and ensuring that success continues. Many companies use performance appraisals to relay information to the employees about their performance level within the company. Annual performance appraisals are so prevalent that 72% of companies use them to measure employee performance (Fawcett). Though the success of the review to motivate and improve employee performance, greatly depends on how well the manager executes the appraisal. Performance appraisals are important to companies but, the question of at what cost to the employee should it continue still continues to linger.
In conducting appraisal, information of the current skills and job behavior will be recorded, evaluated and trained accordingly to their needs. Through performance appraisal, employees’ motivation level can be increased by obtaining feedbacks and companies can know the strength and weaknesses of their staffs. This will improve understanding between organization and employees on performance standards. Companies will be able to identify
Appraisals are conducted in order to fulfill their obligation, some others do it to fill a report in their file but the successful organisations understand the benefits of appraisals which are to strategically manage performance of employees. The process provides a record of individual performance recorded over a given period of time. The process gives every one an opportunity to reflect on future development and how to meet one’s expectations. The output of the performance appraisal helps the supervisor in determining salary increases and gives an opportunity to focus on future goals through identifying the underlying issues and correcting them to attain better results in the future which benefits both the employee and the organization (Sanchez & Levine, 2009, p. 53).
Performance appraisal is defined by Mathias, Jackson (2005, p106) as ‘the process of evaluating how well employees perform their jobs as compared to a set of standards, and then communicating that information to those employees.’ This evaluation or review is usually carried out periodically. A performance appraisal usually forms an integral part of an organization’s Performance Management System, and although there are criticisms against performance appraisals, its many advantages heavily outweigh their shortcomings.
A number of studies suggest that managers regularly find the formal appraisal process to be frustrating, political and a less than meaningful experience, which does not bode well for management development[2]. The manager in the opening quote states, “I see an awful lot of problems that have a lot of negative consequences associated with managerial appraisals.” The purpose of this effort is to identify the specific causes of why managerial appraisals frequently fail and are ineffective as a management development tool.
Performance Appraisal can be referred to as a method of evaluating your employees. Using this method, the performance of an employee is evaluated in terms of the quality, quantity, cost and time. Performance appraisal can be regarded as a part of career development.
Trying to fix all the issues regarding performance appraisals is a difficult task. All of the proposed systems profess to be able to fix some of the problems, but none seems to cover them all. Therefore, the best solution is not the one that fixes all of the issues, but rather the one that addresses as many as possible, while also enhancing the workplace and performance. By these standards the most efficacious solution would be constant feedback and coaching, which improves morale and employee retention, while at the same time reducing recency bias.
However, the feedback of performance appraisal can also be a drawback, as it is not a common thing that such a system have promised so much and delivered so little (Grint, 1993). By looking at the contradiction of it, it could be seen that the highlight of this system is the way of delivering of the appraisal result to employees.