Improvement Potential
•Many criteria used focus on past
•Cannot change past
•Should emphasize future
Responsibility for Appraisal
•Immediate supervisor
•Subordinates
•Peers and team members
•Self-appraisal
•Customer appraisal
Immediate Supervisor
•Traditionally most common choice
•Usually in excellent position to observe employee’s job performance
•Has responsibility for managing particular unit
Subordinates
•Our culture has viewed evaluation by subordinates negatively.
•Some firms find that evaluation of managers by subordinates is both feasible and needed.
•Issues:
–Could be seen as a popularity contest
–Possible reprisal against employees
Peers and Team Members
•Work closely with evaluated employee and probably have undistorted perspective on typical performance
•Problems include reluctance of some people who work closely together, especially on teams, to criticize each other
Self-Appraisal
•If employees understand their objectives and the criteria used for evaluation, they are in a good position to appraise own performance
•Employee development is self-development
•Self-appraisal may make employees more highly motivated
Customer Appraisal
•Customer behavior determines firm’s degree of success
•Demonstrates commitment to customer
•Holds employees accountable
•Fosters change
Performance Appraisal for Telecommuters
•Well-defined understanding of job roles and performance measures
•Have objective measurements that apply to all employees
•Do not to vary the performance standards and metrics for virtual workers from those of office workers
The Appraisal Period
•Prepared at specific intervals
•Usually annually or semiannually
•Period may begin with employee’s date of hire
•All employees may be evaluated at same time
Choosing a Performance Appraisal Method
•360-degree evaluation
•Rating scales
•Critical incidents
•Essay
•Work standards
•Ranking
•Paired comparisons
•Forced distribution
•Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS)
•Result-based systems
360-Degree Evaluation
•Multi-rater evaluation
•Input from multiple sources
•Focuses on skills needed across organizational boundaries
•More objective measure of performance
•Process more legally defensible
Rating Scales
•Rates employees according to defined factors
•Judgments are recorded on a scale
•Many employees are evaluated quickly
Critical Incidents
•Written records of highly favorable and unfavorable work actions
•Appraisal more likely to cover entire evaluation period
•Does not focus on last few weeks or months
Essay
•Brief narrative describing performance
•Tends to focus on extreme behavior
•Depends heavily on evaluator's writing ability
•Comparing essay evaluations might be difficult
Work Standards
•Compares performance to predetermined standard
•Standards: Normal output of average worker operating at normal pace
•Time study and work sampling used
•Workers need to know how standards were set
Ranking
•All employees from group ranked in order of overall performance
•Comparison is based on single criterion, such as overall performance