Method of Performance Appraisal

Method of Performance Appraisal

Individual Evaluation Methods

Under the individual evaluation methods of merit rating, employees are evaluated one at a time without comparing them with other employees in the organization.

(a) Confidential report: It is mostly used in government organizations. It is a descriptive report prepared, generally at the end of every year, by the employee's immediate superior. The report highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the subordinate. The report is not databased. The impressions of the superior about the subordinate are merely recorded there. It does not offer any feedback to the appraisee. The appraisee is not very sure about why his ratings have fallen despite his best efforts, why others are rated high when compared to him, how to rectify his mistakes, if any; on what basis he is going to be evaluated next year, etc. Since the report is generally not made public and hence no feedback is available, the subjective analysis of the superior is likely to be hotly contested. In recent years, due to pressure from courts and trade unions, the details of a negative confidential report are given to the appraisee.

(b) Essay evaluation: Under this method, the rater is asked to express the strong as well as weak points of the employee's behavior. This technique is normally used with a combination of the graphic rating scale because the rater can elaborately present the scale by substantiating an explanation for his rating. While preparing the essay on the employee, the rater considers the following factors: (i) Job knowledge and potential of the employee; (ii) Employee's understanding of the company's programmes, policies, objectives, etc.; (iii) The employee's relations with co-workers and superiors; (iv) The employee's general planning, organizing and controlling ability; (v) The attitudes and perceptions of the employee, in general.

Essay evaluation is a non-quantitative technique. This method is advantageous in at least one sense, i.e., the essay provides a good deal of information about the employee and also reveals more about the evaluator. The essay evaluation method however, suffers from the following limitations:

? It is highly subjective; the supervisor may write a biased essay. The employees who are sycophants will be evaluated more favorably then other employees.

? Some evaluators may be poor in writing essays on employee performance. Others may be superficial in explanation and use flowery language which may not reflect the actual performance of the employee. It is very difficult to find effective writers nowadays.

? The appraiser is required to find time to prepare the essay. A busy appraiser may write the essay hurriedly without properly assessing the actual performance of the worker. On the other hand, appraiser takes a long time, this becomes uneconomical from the view point of the firm, because the time of the evaluator (supervisor) is costly.

(c) Critical incident technique: Under this method, the manager prepares lists of statements of very effective and ineffective behavior of an employee. These critical incidents or events represent the outstanding or poor behavior of employees on the job. The manager maintains logs on each employee, whereby he periodically records critical incidents of the workers behavior. At the end of the rating period, these recorded critical incidents are used in the evaluation of the workers' performance. An example of a good critical incident of a sales assistant is the following:

July 20 – The sales clerk patiently attended to the customers complaint. He is polite, prompt, enthusiastic in solving the customers' problem.

On the other hand the bad critical incident may appear as under:

July 20 – The sales assistant stayed 45 minutes over on his break during the busiest part of the day. He failed to answer the store manager's call thrice. He is lazy, negligent, stubborn and uninterested in work.

This method provides an objective basis for conducting a thorough discussion of an employee's performance. This method avoids recency bias (most recent incidents get too much emphasis). This method suffers however from the following limitations: