PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL by F. Kuschnereit

Defined as "a systematic review of an individual employee's performance on the job which is used to evaluate the effectiveness of his or her work." The purposes of appraisal programs fall into three categories:

Administrative: Involving personnel actions, such as raises, promotions, transfers, or discharge.

Development: Using appraisal information to identify weaknesses in performance; this helps guide the employee in setting goals for improvement.

Research: Performance-appraisal information is often used as a criterion to assess the validity of personnel selection and training procedures.

Appraisal program should be developed that not only teaches supervisors how to evaluate but also shows employees the need for appraisal. This reduces supervisor reluctance and employee anxiety. Without trained appraisers, evaluations may be invalid. If employees believe the information will be used for pay-raise and promotion decisions, they may be far more defensive about their weaknesses. On the other hand, if they believe the appraisal is a diagnostic aid to help them strengthen their weak areas, they may be far more accepting. Like personnel selection and training programs, performance appraisal must be heavily backed by management to be effective.

Personnel Training. Perhaps the main use of performance-appraisal information is for employee feedback. Deficiencies or weaknesses then become the targets for training. Perhaps the second-most-common use of performance appraisals is to make raises. Performance-appraisal information is vital for placement decisions. Promotions may be based on how well an employee performs on his or her current job. In many criterion-related validity studies, assessments of the criterion are derived from performance appraisals. Validity of Objective Production Data. When we speak of a criterion's validity, we mean its relevance.

Personnel Data

Company's personnel office the two most common indexes of performance are absenteeism and turnover, although records may also be kept on accidents, grievances, and lateness. Accidents can be used as a measure of job performance but only for a limited number of jobs. Grievances and lateness have the least relevance, but they may be of value in some situations. Judgmental data are usually used for performance appraisal. Graphic rating scales are the most commonly used system in performance appraisal.

Raters may commit errors in judgement: Leniency errors;Halo errors are considered to be the most serious and pervasive of all rating errors; and Central-tendency errors.

Central-tendency error refers to the rater's unwillingness to assign extreme-high or low-ratings. All three errors can lead to a restriction in range.

There are three major employee-comparison methods:Rank-order method, Paired-comparison method, and Forced-distribution method.

Most recent advances in performance appraisal have involved behavioral checklists and scales. All of the methods in this group have their origin directly or indirectly in the critical-incidents method. Critical incidents are behaviours that result in good or poor job performance.

Weighted checklist

Behaviorally anchored rating scales. Performance is rated on a scale, but the scale points are anchored with behavioral incidents.

Behavioral-observation scales(BOS) measures frequency of critical incidents.

Mixed-standard rating scales: it has been proposed that this mixed method minimizes leniency errors and the halo effect. The validity of judgmental data in performance appraisal, refers to the extent to which the observed data are accurate measures of the "true" variable being measured. One method of assessing the validity of judgmental data is to correlate them with performance appraisals from another method, such as objective production or personnel data. You can train raters to make better performance appraisals? Biggest problem with self-assessment: positive leniency. Most people have higher opinions of their own performance than others do. Thornton (1980) reports that despite leniency problems, there are fewer halo errors with self-appraisals. People apparently recognize their strengths and weaknesses and appraise themselves accordingly. Also reported little agreement in most studies comparing self-assessments and supervisor assessments.

Three methods that groups can use to assess their members are Peer Assessments,Peer ratings, and peer ranking.

Assessment centres involve appraising multiple dimensions of performance using several methods and raters. One need not have very high validity coefficients for assessment centre evaluations to have utility. Validity coefficients as low as .10 can produce significant gains in overall criterion performance compared to random (r=.00) selection; that is, the utility of valid evaluations is increased because of the value of the assessee's job to the organization. Kilmoski and Brickner concluded that assessment evaluations are indeed valid but I/O psychologists still do not really know why. The authors proposed five possible explanations.

Actual criterion contamination.

Subtle criterion contamination.

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Performance consistency.

Managerial intelligence.

In the final step of appraisal, the employee and his or her superior review and discuss the evaluation, usually referred to by the misnomer "performance-appraisal interview." Feedback on job performance has two properties: information and motivation.