Performance Appraisal:Definition and Uses

1. Performance Appraisal:Definition and Uses Performance appraisal is the process of determining and communicating to an employee how he or she is performing on the job and,ideally, establishing a plan of improvement. One of the most common uses of performance appraisal is for making administrative decisions relating to promotions, firings, layoffs, and merit pay increases.

2. Understanding Performance Performance refers to the degree of accomplishment of the tasks that make up an employee�s job. It reflects how well an employee is fulfilling the requirements of a job. Job performance is the net effect of an employee�s effort as modified by abilities and role(or task) perceptions. Thus,performance in a given situation can be viewed as resulting from the interrelationships among effort, abilities, and role perceptions.

3. Environmental Factors as Performance obstacles Some of the more common potential performance obstacles include a lack of or conflicting demands on the employee�s time, inadequate work facilities and equipment, restrictive policies that affect the job, lack of cooperation from others, type of supervision, temperature, lighting, noise, machine or equipment pacing, shifts, and even luck.

4. Performance Appraisal Methods Goal setting, or management by objectives(MBO) Multi-rater assessment(or 360-degree feedback) Work standards approach Essay appraisal Critical-incident appraisal Graphic rating scale Checklist Behaviorally anchored rating scale(BARS) Forced-choice rating Ranking methods

5. MBO MBO consists of establishing clear and precisely defined statements of objectives for the work to be done by an employee, developing an action plan indicating how these objectives are to be achieved, allowing the employee to implement this action plan, measuring objective achievement, taking corrective action when necessary, and establishing new objectives for the future. MBO also requires that employees participate in the objective-setting process.

6. The work standards approach to performance appraisal It involves setting a standard or expected level of output and then comparing each employee�s performance to the standard.

7. Essay appraisal The essay appraisal method requires that the evaluation describe an employee�s performance in written narrative form.

8. Critical-incident appraisal This method requires the evaluator to keep a written record of incidents as they occur. The incidents recorded should involve job behaviors that illustrate both satisfactory and unsatisfactory performance of the employee being rated.

9. Graphic rating scale With this method, the rater assesses an employee on factors such as quantity of work completed, dependability, job knowledge, attendance, accuracy of work, and cooperativeness.

10. Checklist method of performance appraisal In this method, the rater makes yes-or-no responses to a series of questions concerning the employee�s behavior.

11. Forced-choice method In this method, the rater is required to rank a set of statements describing how an employee carries out the duties and responsibilities of the job.

12. Multi-rater assessment(360-degree feedback) In this method,managers, peers, customers, suppliers, or colleagues are asked to complete questionnaires on the employee being assessed.