PERFORMANCE

APPRAISAL

SYSTEM
PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL:
An organization’s goals can be achieved only when people put in their best efforts.
How to ascertain whether an employee has shown his or her best performance on a
given job? The answer is performance appraisal. Employee assessment is one of the
fundamental jobs of HRM. But not an easy one though. This chapter is devoted to a
detailed discussion of the nature and process of conducting performance appraisal.

Meaning and Definition

In simple terms, performance appraisal may be understood as the assessment of an
individual's performance in a systematic way, the performance being measured
against such factors as job knowledge, quality and quantity of output, initiative,
leadership abilities, supervision, dependability, co-operation, judgment, versatility,
health, and the like. Assessment should not be confined to past performance alone.
Potentials of the employee for future performance must also be assessed. A formal
definition of performance appraisal is: It is the systematic evaluation of the
individual with respect to his or her performance on the job and his or her potential
for development.

A more comprehensive definition is: Performance' appraisal is a formal structured

system of measuring and evaluating an employee’s job related behaviors and
outcomes to discover how and why the employee is presently performing on the job
and how the employee can perform more effectively in the future so that the
employee organization and society all benefit.
The second definition includes employees’ behavior as part of the assessment.
Behavior can be active or passive--do something or do nothing. Either way behavior
affects job results. The other terms used for performance appraisal arc: performance
rating, employee assessment. Employees performance review, personnel appraisal,

Performance evaluation employee evaluation and (perhaps the oldest of the

terms used) merit rating. In a formal sense, employee assessment is as old as, the
concept of management and in an informal sense; it is probably as old as mankind.
Nor performance appraisal is done in isolation. Job analysis sets out requirements,
which are translated into performance standards, which in turn from the basis for
performance appraisal.
OBJECTIVES OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL
Data relating to performance assessment of employees arc recorded, stored. and
used for seven purposes. The main purposes of employee assessment are:

 To effect promotions based on competence and performance.

 To confirm the services of probationary employees upon their completing
the probationary period satisfactorily.
 To assess the training and development needs of employees.
 To decide upon a pay raise where (as in the unorganized sector) regular pay
scales have not been fixed.
 To let the employees know where they stand insofar as their performance is
concerned and to assist them with constructive criticism and guidance for the
purpose of their development.
 To improve communication. Performance appraisal provides a format for
dialogue between the superior and the subordinate, and improves
understanding of personal goals and concerns. This can also have the effect
of increasing the trust between the rater and the ratee.
 Finally, performance appraisal can be used to determine whether HR
programmes such as selection, training, and transfers have been effective or
not.

Broadly, performance appraisal serves four objectives-

 developmental uses,
 administrative uses/decisions,
 organizational maintenance/objectives, and
 documentation purposes

Multiple Purposes of Performance Assessment

General Applications Specific Purpose
Developmental Uses Identification of individual needs
Performance feedback
Determining transfers and job
assignments
Identification of individual strengths and
development needs
Administrative Uses/Decisions Salary
Promotion
 Retention or termination
Recognition of individual performance
Lay-offs
Identification of poor performers
Organizational Maintenance/ Objectives HR planning
Determining organization training needs
Evaluation of organizational goal
achievement
Information for goal identification
Evaluation of HR systems
Reinforcement of organizational
development needs
Documentation Criteria for validation research
Documentation for HR decisions
Helping to meet legal requirements

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

The objectives of performance appraisal, listed above, point out the purpose which
such an exercise seeks to meet. What needs emphasis is that performance
evaluation contributes to firm's competitive strength. Besides encouraging high
levels of performance, the evaluation system helps identify employees with
potential, reward performance equitably and determine employee's need for
training. Specifically, performance appraisal helps an organization gain
competitive edge in the following ways

Improving Performance
An effective appraisal system can contribute to competitive advantage by
improving employee job performance in two ways-by directing employee
behaviour towards organizational goals, as was done by the second beekeeper (see
opening case), and by monitoring that behaviour to ensure that the goals are met.

Making Correct Decisions

As stated above, appraisal is a critical input in making decisions on such issues as
pay raise, promotion, transfer, training, discharges and completion of probationary
periods. Right decision on each of these can contribute to competitive strength of
an organization. If promotion, for example, is made on performance, the promotee
feels motivated to enhance his or her performance.
Ensuring Legal Compliance
Promotions made on factors other than performance might land up a firm in a legal
battle, thus diverting its focus on non-productive areas, as it happened to
Williamson Magar. Organizations can minimize costly performance-related
litigation by using appraisal systems that give fair and accurate ratings.

Minimizing Job Dissatisfaction and Turnover

Employees tend to become emotional and frustrated if they perceive that the
ratings they get are unfair and inaccurate. Such employees find that the efforts they
had put in became futile and obviously get de-motivated. Dissatisfaction in the job
sets in and one of the outcomes of job dissatisfaction is increased turnover. Fair
and accurate appraisal results in high motivation and increased job satisfaction. An
organization having satisfied and motivated employees will have an edge over its
competitors.

APPRAISAL PROCESS

Objectives of Appraisal

Establish job Expectation

Design an appraisal
performance

Performance interview

Use appraisal data for

appropriate purposes
1. Objectives of Appraisal
Objectives of appraisal as stated above include effecting promotions and transfers,
assessing training needs, awarding pay increases, and the like. The emphasis in all
these is to correct problems. These objectives are appropriate as long as the
approach in appraisal is individual. Appraisal in future, would assume systems
orientations. In the systems approach, the objectives of appraisal stretch beyond the
traditional ones.

In the systems approach, appraisal aims at improving the performance, instead of

merely assessing it. Towards this end, an appraisal system seeks to evaluate
opportunity factors. Opportunity factors include the physical environment such as
noise, ventilation and lightings, available resources such as human and computer
assistance and social processes such as leadership effectiveness. These opportunity
variables are more important than individual abilities in determining work
performance. In the systems approach the emphasis is not on individual assessment
and rewards or punishments. But it is on how work the work system affects an
individual’s. In the systems approach the emphasis is not on individual assessment
and rewards or punishments. But it is on how the work systems affect an
individual’s performance. In order to use a systems approach, managers must learn
to appreciate the impact that systems levels factors have on individual performance
and subordinates must adjust to lack of competition among individuals. Thus, if a
systems approach is going to be successful, the employee must believe that by
working towards shared goals, everyone will benefit.

Not that the role of the individual is undermined. The individual is responsible for
a large percentage of his or her work performance. Employees should not be
encouraged to seek organizational reasons for his failures. The identifications of
systems obstacles should be used to facilitate development and motivation, not as
an excuse to poor performance. The following table displays some of the
differences between the traditional approach and the systems-oriented one.

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL SYSTEMS

 Traditional Systems
Guiding value Attribution to individual Attribution to systems
Primary roles Control, documentation Development, problem
solving
Leadership practices Directional, evaluative Facilitative, coaching
Appraisal frequency Occasional Frequent

Degree of formality High Low

Reward practices Individual orientation Group orientation

2. Establish Job Expectations

The second step in the appraisal process is to establish job expectations. This
includes informing the employee what is expected of him or her on the job.
Normally, a discussion is held with his or her superior to review the major duties
contained in the job place of formal performance evaluation.

3. Design Appraisal Programme

Designing an appraisal programme poses several questions which we need to
answers. They are: -
1. Formals versus informal appraisal
2. Whose performance is to be assessed?
3. Who are the raters?
4. What problems are encountered?
5. How to solve the problems?
6. What should be evaluated?
7. When to evaluate?
8. What methods of appraisal are to be used?

1. Whose performance should be rated? To the question as to whose

performance should be rated, the answer is obvious—employees, is it individual or
teams? Specifically the rate may be defined as the individual, work group, division,
or organizations. It is also possible to define the rate at multiple levels.

For example, under some condition, it may be desirable to appraise performance

both at work-group level for merit-pay increases and at the individual level to
assess training needs. Two conditions necessitate a group level appraisal—group
cohesiveness and difficulty in identifying individual performance.
Description: Individual should not be expected to begin the job until they
understand what is expected out of them.

2. Formal V/s informal appraisal: - the first step in designing an appraisal

programme is to decide whether the appraisal should be formal or informal. Formal
appraisal usually occurs at specified time periods—once or twice year. Formal
appraisals are most often required by the organizations for the purposes of
employee evaluation. Informal performance appraisal can occur whenever the
superior feels the need for communication. For example, if the employee has been
consistently meeting or executing standards, an informal appraisal may be in order
to simply recognize this fact. Discussions can take place anywhere in the
organizations, ranging from the manager’s office to the canteen. But care needs to
be taken to ensure that the discussion is held in private. Many organizations
encourage a mixture of both formal and informal appraisal. The formal appraisal is
most often used as primary evaluation. However, the informal appraisal is very
helpful for more performance feedback. Informal appraisal should not take the
Group cohesiveness refers to shared feeling among work-team members. There is
cooperation and clear understanding to accomplish tasks which are interdependent.
Any attempt to assess individual performance shall undermine group cohesiveness
and tend to promote individualistic or even competitive orientation. The difficulty
in identifying individual contribution is also important to consider. In some cases,
interdependent of tasks is so complete that it is difficult to identify who has
contributed what. There is no other choice but to view that task as a team effort.
But the point to be remembered is that the performance of all employees must be
rated. All must become raters.

3. Who are Raters? Raters can be immediate supervisors, specialist from the HR
department, subordinates, Peers, committees, clients, self appraisal, or a
combination of several.

a. Immediate supervisor is the fit candidate to appraise the performance of his or

her subordinate. There are 3 reasons in support of this choice. No one is familiar
with the subordinate’s performance than his or her superior. Another reason is that
the superior has the responsibility of managing a particular unit. When the tasks of
evaluating a subordinate is given to another person, the superior authority may be
undermined seriously. Finally, training and development of subordinate is am
portent element in every mangers job. Since appraisal programme are often clearly
linked to training and development, the immediate superior may be the legal choice
to conduct the performance evaluation.

b. Subordinate can assess the performance of their superiors. The use of this
choice may be useful in assessing an employee ability to communicate, delegate
work, allocate resources, disseminate information, resolve intrapersonal conflict,
and deal with employees on a fair basis. But the problem with the subordinate
evaluation is that supervisors tend to become popular, not by effective leadership,
but by mere gimmicks.

c. Peers are in better position to evaluate certain facts of job performance which
the subordinates or supervisors cannot do. Such facts include contribution skills,
reliability and initiative. Closeness of the working relationships and the amount of
personal contacts place peers in a better position to make accurate assessments.
Unfortunately friendship or animosity may result in distortion of evaluation.
Further when reward allocation is based on peer evaluation, series conflicts among
co-workers may develop. Finally join together to rate each other high.

d. Although clients are seldom used for rating employee performance, nothing
prevents an organization from using this source. Clients may be members within
the organization who have direct contact with the rate and make use of an output
(goods or services) this employee provides. Interest, courtesy, dependability and
innovativeness are but a few of the qualities for which clients can offer rating
information. Clients, external to the organization can also offer similar kinds of
information. Where appraisal is made by the superior, peers, subordinates and
clients, it is called the 360-degree system of appraisal. First developed at General
Electric, US in 1992 the system has become popular in our country too. GE (India).
Reliance Industries, Crompton Greaves, Godrej Soaps, Wipro, Infosys, Thermax
and Thomas Cook are using the method with greater benefits. The Arthur
Anderson Survey 1997 reveals that 20% of the organization use 360 degree
method. In the 360 degree method, besides assessing performance. Other attributes
of the assess—talents, behavioral quirks, values, ethical standards, tempers and
loyalty are evaluated by the people who are best placed to do it. Many employees
use rating committees to evaluate employees. These committees are often
composed of the employee’s immediate supervisor and three or four other
supervisors who come in contact with the employee. This choice is welcome when
an employee in the course of his or her job performs a
variety of tasks in different environment. For e.g. 1supervisor may work with the
employee when technical aspects of a job are being performed and another
supervisor may deal with the same employee in situations where communications
skills are crucial. There are several benefits in using multiple raters. First there may
be objectivity in rating as more than rater is involved in the assessment.
Furthermore where there are differences in the rater ought ratings they usually
stem from the fact that raters at different level in the organization often observe
different facets of an employee performance-the appraisal to reflect these
differences. The disadvantages of committee rating are that it diminishes the role
of the immediate supervisor in the area of training and development.

e. In self –appraisal employee himself or herself evaluates his or her own

performance. Indian Telephone Industries has been following the selfappraisal
system for executives in grade I to IV. Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments too
ask their performance to prepare their own appraisal. On the positive side it may be
stated that in self-appraisal there is an opportunity to participate in evaluation
particularly if it is combine with goal setti9ng and this should be improve the
mangers motivation. Managers are less defensive in self-evaluation than when
supervisors tell them what they are. Self-appraisal is best suited where executive
development is the main purpose of evaluation as the approach enabler’s managers
to clearly assess their areas of differences. Unfortunately self appraisal falls short
almost by any criterion. They tend to be more lenient compared to other sources of
evaluation, even that of peers who are more lenient than their superiors. Self-
appraisal is also more likely to be less biased and less in agreement with judgment
of others. In practice a combination of methods is followed for employee. For
example evaluation by self may be followed by a superior, the personal department
or the HR department.

2. PERIODIC REVIEW (during the year)

Whoever may be the rater two requisites must be fulfilled. First the rater must be
free from bias. Second the rater must have an opportunity to observe the full
spectrum of activities and behavior of the rate over an extended time period.]

4. Problems of Rating: - Performance appraisals are subject to a wide variety of

inaccurate and biases referred to as rating errors. These errors occur in the rater’s
observations, judgments and information processing and can seriously affect
assessment result. The most common rating errors are leniency or severity, central
tendency, halo effect, primary and recency effects, perceptual set, performance
dimension behavior, spillover effect and status effect.

5. Leniency or Severity: - Leniency or severity on the part of the rater makes the
assessment subjective. Subjective assessments defeat the very purpose of
performance appraisal. Ratings are lenient for the following reasons:
  The rater may feel that anyone under his or her jurisdictions who is rated
unfavorably will reflect poorly on his or her own worthiness.
 He or she may feel that anyone who could have been rated unfavorably has
already been discharged from the organization
 He or she may feel that a derogatory rating will be revealed to the rate to the
determinant of the relations between the rater and rate.
 He or she may rate leniently in order to win promotions for the subordinates
and therefore indirectly increase his or her hold over them.
 He or she may be projecting
 He or she feels it necessary to always approve of others in order to gain
approval for him or herself.
 He or she may be operating on the premise, “whoever associates with me is
meritorious therefore, and I am meritorious”.
 He or she may rate leniently because there exists, in the culture, a response
set approve rather than disapprove.

4. Central tendency: - This occurs when employees are incorrectly rated near the
average or middle of the scale. The attitude of the rate is to play safe. This safe
playing attitude stems from certain doubts and anxieties which the raters have
while assessing the ratees. Such doubts and anxieties are:

 “Do I know the man sufficiently well to be able to give a fair assessment of
him?
 “If I rate him the way I think I should what will be its influence on his
relations with me and on his performance in the future?
 “If I rate him the way I think I should what will be its effect on my relations
 with the others subordinates?”
 “If I rate him the way I think I should what will be its effect on his
relationship within the group or subordinates?”
 “Will I able to be objective in view of pressures from peers, subordinates
and trade union?”
 “If I rate him the way I think I should will be accused to being partial?”
 “How will my boss view the appraisal I make and how will that influences
the way he appraises the man?”
 “What standards will my peers adopt to appreciate their subordinates? And
in view of this am I likely to affect adversely the future of my
subordinates?”
Naturally the rates use such expressions as satisfactory and average to describe the
performance of the rates. For example the principal of a college while giving
character certificates to the outgoing students describe the character of each student
as satisfactory. Obviously it’s become difficult to distinguish between excellent
performance and poor performance. In small organization it is common to label all
employees as an average. But in large companies errors of this type tend to obviate
the value of evaluations.

Close to error of central tendency is the problem of range restriction. Range

restriction may involve clustering all employees around any point on a scale, often
in combination with leniency errors at very top. What is distinctive in the error of
central tendency and the error of range restriction is a failure to note real
performance differences, either intentionally or due to insufficient attention.

Halo Error - it takes place when one aspect of an individual performance

influences the evaluation of the entire performance of the individual just as the
assessment of the performance of a student in his or her examination being
influence by the opening paragraph of every answer. If the introductory paragraph
is poorly written the chances of scoring high marks in that answer are diminished
however good the subsequent portion of the essay may be In an organization a halo
error occurs when an employee who work late constantly might be rated high on
productivity and quality of output as well as on motivation. Similarly an attractive
or popular employee might be given a high overall rating. Rating employees
separately can each of a number of performance and encouraging raters to guard
against the halo effect are two ways to reduce halo effect.

Rater effect: this includes favoritism, stereotyping and hostility. Excessively high
or low scores are given only to certain individual or groups based on the rater’s
attitude towards the rate, not on actual outcomes or behavior. Sex, age, race and
friendship biases are example of this type of error.

Primary and recency effects: - the rater’s ratings are heavily influenced either by
behavior exhibited by the rate during the early stage of the review period or by
outcomes or behavior exhibited by the rate near the end of the review period
(recency). For example if a salesperson captures an important contract/ sales just
before the completion of the appraisal the timing of the incident may inflate his or
her standing even though the overall performance of the salesperson may not have
been encouraging. Likewise a blunder committed just before the appraisal period
may diminish chance of securing a favorable rating even if the performance is
good.
One way of guarding against such an error is to ask rater to consider the composite
performance of the ratee and not to be influenced by one incident or own
achievement. The rater must also be aware of tendency on the part of the rates to
improve odds in their favors or suppress weak points during the rating period.

Perceptual Set: - this occurs when the rater’s assessment is influenced by

previously held beliefs. If the supervisors for example have a belief that employee
hailing from one particular region is intelligent and hard working his subsequent
rating of an employee hailing from that region tends to be favorably high.

Performance Dimension order: 2 or more dimensions on a performance

instrument follows or closely follow each other and both describe or rotate to a
similar quality. The rater rates first dimension accurately and then rates the second
dimension similar to the first because of their proximity. If the dimension had been
arranged in a significant different order the rating might have been different.

Spillover effect: This refers to allowing past performance appraisal ratings to

unjustifiably influence current ratings, past ratings, good or bad result for the
period although the demonstrated behavior does not deserve the rating good or bad.

Status effect: - it refers to overrating of employee in higher-level jobs held in high

esteem, and underrating employees in lower-level-job or jobs held in low esteem.
It is not the rater’s errors alone that are barriers to accurate and valid measurement
of employee performance. Barriers lie deep within the genetic and acquired make-
up of all people concerned with performance appraisal. A wide variety of
emotional, psychological, intellectual and physical factors that at first glance may
appear to be separate and irrelevant may combine in any numbers of ways during
the appraisal process.

Solving Rater’s Problems

The best way to overcome the problems is to provide training to the raters. At
Hewlett- Packard, a 2 day training course is organized every year to prepare
managers to handle appraisals better. Not that training is a ‘cure-all’ for all the ills
of appraisal systems. From a practical point of view, several factors, including the
extent which pay is related to performance ratings, union pressure, turnover rates,
time constraints and the need to justify ratings may be more important than
training, influencing the ratings they actually give. This means that improving
rating systems involves not just training the raters but remedying outside factors
such ass union pressure. And it means that rater training, to be effective, should
also add real life problems such as the fact that union representatives will try to
influence supervisors to rate everyone high.

But training can help improve the appraisal system to the extent of distortion that
occurs due to the rater’s error such as halo, leniency, central tendency and bias. In
a typical training, raters are shown a video-tape of jobs being performed and are
asked to rate the workers. Ratings made by each participant are then placed on a
flip chart and the various charts are explained. For e.g., a trainee is rated on all
criteria (such as quantity and quality) about the same, the trainer might explain that
halo error had occurred. If, on the other hand, a trainer rated all video-taped
workers very high, this might be explained as a leniency error. Typically, the
trainer gives the correct rating and then illustrates the rating errors made. In effect,
training of raters must help strengthen the factors that tend to improve accuracy of
ratings and weaken those that lower the accuracy of the performance measurement.

Factors that help improve accuracy:

 The rater has observed and is familiar with behaviors to be appraised.
 The rater has documented the behaviors to improve the recall.
 The rater has a checklist to obtain and review job-related information.
 The rater is aware of personal biases and is willing to take action to
minimize their effect.
 Rating scores by raters of one group or organization are summarized and
compared with those by other raters.
 The rater focuses attention on performance-related behaviors over which the
rater has better control than in other aspects of evaluation.
 Higher levels of management are held accountable for reviewing all ratings.
 The rater’s own performance ratings are related to the quality of rating given
and the performance of units.
 Performance factors are properly defined.

Factors that may lower accuracy:

1. The rater rates ratees only when administrative actions are contemplated.
2. The rater tends to inflate ratings when the ratees receive scores and results of
appraisals.
3. The rater tends to recall more behaviours known to be of particular interest to
higher level managers, whether or not they are pertinent, when his or her ratings
are reviewed by such authorities.
4. The rater is unable to express him or herself honestly and unambiguously.
5. Appraisal systems, processes and instruments fail to support the rater.
6. The rater has to rate employees on factors that are poorly defined.
7. Finally, the supervisor/rater must be trained to conduct the appraisal interview.
For many raters, this is a difficult task, especially when the appraisal is unfavorable
to the rater. Favorable or unfavorable rating, it is the job of the rater to convince
the ratee about the appraisal, and advise him or her about the future course of
action the rate should take.

What should be rated?

One of the steps in designing an appraisal programme is to determine the

evaluation criteria. It is obvious that the criteria should be related to the job. The
six criteria for assessing performance are:

1. Quality: The degree to which the result or process of carrying out an activity
approaches perfection in terms of either conforming to some ideal way of
performing the activity, or fulfilling the activity’s intended purpose.

2. Quantity: The amount produced, expressed in monetary terms, number of units,

or number of completed activity cycles.

3. Timeliness: the degree to which an activity is completed or a result produced, at

the earliest time desirable from the standpoints of both co-coordinating with the
outputs of others and of maximizing the time available for other activities.

4. Cost Effectiveness: the degree to which the use of the organization’s resources
(e.g. human, monetary, technological and material) is maximized in the sense of
getting the highest gain or reduction in loss from each unit or instance of use of a
resource.

5. Need for supervision: the degree to which a job performer can carry out a job
function without either having to request supervisory assistance or requiring
supervisory intervention to prevent an adverse outcome.

6. Interpersonal impact: the degree to which as performer promotes feeling of self-

esteem, goodwill and co-operation among co-workers and sub-ordinates.

These criteria relate to past performance and behavior of an employee. There is

also the need for assessing, as was pointed out earlier, the potential of an employee
for future performance, particularly when the employee is tipped for assuming
greater responsibilities.
Timing of Evaluation

How often should an employee be assessed? The general trend is to evaluate once
in 3 months, or six months, or once in a year. According to a survey conducted in
1997 by Arthur Anderson, 70 percent of the organizations conduct performance
appraisal once a year. Newly hired employees are rated more frequently than the
older ones. Frequent assessment is better than phased evaluation. Feedback in the
latter is delayed and the advantage of timely remedial measures by the employee is
lost. Frequent evaluation gives constant feedback to the rate, thus enabling him or
her to improve performance if there is any deficiency. The performance of trainees
and probationers should be evaluated at the end of respective programmes.

METHODS OF APPRAISAL
The last to be addressed in the process of designing an appraisal programme is to
determine methods of evaluation. Numerous methods have been devised to
measure the quantity and quality of employee’s job performance. Each of the
methods discussed could be effective for some purposes, for some organizations.
None should be dismissed or accepted as appropriate except as they relate to the
particular needs of the organization or of a particular type of employees. Broadly,
all the approaches to appraisal can be identified into
(i) past-oriented methods
(ii) Future-oriented methods.

Past-Oriented Methods

Rating Scales: This is the simplest and most popular technique for appraising
employee performance; the typical rating-scale system consists of several
numerical scales, each representing a job-related performance criterion such as
dependability, initiative, output, attendance, attitude, co-operation, and the like.
Each scale ranges from excellent to poor. The rater checks the appropriate
performance level on each criterion, then computes the employee’s total numerical
score. The number of points scored may be linked to salary increases, whereby so
many points equal a rise of some percentage.

Rating scales offer the advantages of adaptability, relatively easy use and low cost.
Nearly every type of job can be evaluated in a short time, and the rater does not
need any training to use the scale.
The disadvantages of this method are several. The rater’s biases are likely to
influence evaluation, and the biases are particularly pronounced on subjective
criteria such as cooperation, attitude and initiative. Furthermore, numerical scoring
gives an illusion of precision that is really unfounded.

Checklist: Under this method a checklist of statements on the traits of the

employee and his or her job is prepared in 2 columns – viz., a ‘Yes’ column and a
‘No’ column. All that the rater (immediate superior) should is tick the ‘Yes’
column if the answer to the statement is positive and in column ‘No’ if the answer
is negative. A typical checklist is given in the table below. After ticking off against
each item, the rater forwards the list to the HR department. The HR department
assigns certain points to each ‘Yes’ ticked.
Depending upon the number of ‘Yes’ the total score is arrived at. When points are
allotted to the checklist, the technique becomes a weighted checklist. The
advantages of
as checklist are economy, ease of administration, limited training of rater, and
standardization. The disadvantages include susceptibility to rater’s biases
(especially the
halo effect), use of personality criteria instead of performance criteria,
misinterpretation
of checklist items, and the use of improper weights by the HR department. Another
disadvantage of this approach is that it does not allow the rater to give up relative
ratings.