APPRAISAL

S OF
MANAGERS
contents

 The Problems of Management Appraisals

 What should be measured?
 Traditional Trait Appraisal
1
The problems of
management
appraisal
 The problems of management
appraisal
1) Compare/contrast error
When appraising employees, it is important never to compare their abilities
and using it to make a judgment.

Each employee is gifted in their unique way and thus has different strengths
and weaknesses. When you try to compare or contrast their abilities, it
means that you will not get a fair review because high performers will
certainly make relatively low performers for particular tasks to look below
average, which on some occasions is never the case.

Of essence is to ensure that you appraise every worker by their

performance against established standards and criteria, individually.
2) Similarity error
In every organization, some employees have a resemblance of different
aspects with the manager. Now some managers usually find it easy to
reward such employees highly compared to those who portray contrasting
behaviour or opinion.

As a manager, it would be significant to ensure that you perform your

employee appraisal objectively and considering that diversity should be
respected, try to carry out the appraisal process based on performance and
results that they provide and not primarily by similarity/dissimilarity that you
have.
3) Bias
Bias is also one of the problems with performance appraisal managers often
encounter. As a matter of fact, everyone has some biases towards someone
or something irrespective of how we portray them. However, as a manager, it
is imperative not to let the biases hinder the manner in which you approach
performance evaluation process.

Your biases can manipulate the objectivity of appraisal hence it is important

to ensure that you keep it off as much as possible to make sure that you do
not compromise the results of your findings. Biases may also lead to
inconsistencies among different employees bearing in mind that the key
element for attaining best results from appraisal is consistency.
4) Stereotyping
Stereotyping is closely related to biases only that in this case, you tend to
make your judgment by your predetermined mindset towards a particular
employee’s race, gender, political affiliation, religious background, culture and
other characteristics.

Stereotyping is problematic when assessing employees’ performance because

it implies that you will only be able to provide judgment based on what you
label the group similar to one that the particular employee belongs to.

What you need to know is that stereotyping can also be positive or negative
and thus can significantly influence your judgment respectively. It is only ideal
to look beyond the labels and evaluate the employee by set standards and
performance.
5) The Halo effect
This is also known as the horns effect. It is a situation where you let your
positive or negative feelings towards an employee to influence your
evaluation easily. It is necessary to judge each criterion independently
without compromising what you feel for the employee.

You should also be careful when doing appraisal evaluations so that in the
event you realize that most criterions are coming out with similar
appraisals, you should halt and check yourself for the halo effect. It is a
fact that each employee will always portray certain areas as their
weakness and others as their strengths. What you need to do is to
ensure that you do not colour the entire evaluation with a particular
impression
6) Recency effect
This is majorly about carrying out an appraisal for a short period before it
takes place. As stated earlier, an appraisal is an activity that takes place
continuously, which means that the focus should not only be for the short
period before it happens but rather the entire time of the year.

In many organizations, problems with performance appraisal usually arise

when a manager decides to determine results by basing their evaluation on
what an employee has achieved just before the assessment. In this case, it
sounds unfair to employees who have been outstanding throughout but later
faulted few days to assessment and vice versa because the appraisal will not
be able to reveal the actual reality.
7) Attribution error
This is one of the trickiest problems with performance appraisal. It
involves making your independent belief on possible causes of some
behaviours or outcome and letting that influence your judgment.

It is never a good idea to develop an assumption of what transpired or

made the employee behave in the manner that he or she did and later use
it as a basis for reviewing the appraisal process. It is only essential if you
stick by the stipulated standards and criterion and how the performance of
each employee compares to such standards. It only becomes a fair when
the employee is judged on their performance in line with the set standards
rather than preconceived notion.
8) Leniency and Severity tendencies
These mistakes usually arise as a result of distribution errors, which imply
that the overall dissemination of appraisal does not stand firm to the
classic bell. This means that some managers are too lenient and will end
up appraising all employees above average, others will give average
whereas others would provide below average.

In the typical occasion, the results need to reflect the classic bell curve
where some employees are graded as high performers; others average
while other poor performers. But in the unlikely event that all appraisal
results come out as similar, you need to ensure that entire performance
measures are given sufficient consideration. It helps in a great way of
making sure that fair appraisal has been carried out.
2
WHAT SHOULD
BE MEASURED
1) Knowing the productivity of the Employees
Often managers do get extremely busy in their daily activities and
hence do not have much time in hand to talk anything extra apart from
the projects and the workload. But it is very much important to discuss
the performance of the employees so that it can be known about how
the employees are performing and if they are performing low, what is
the possible reason behind it.

This is the reason, a number of the organization maintain an evaluation

system either once in a year or even at a time twice a year. Based on
the performance evaluation, the managers talk to the employees to
discuss their performance.
2) Staff Development
With the help of the employee performance knowledge, it can be known
which staff is performing in what way.

Based on such an evaluation, the manager can focus on the weakest

employee and try different tactics and ways to boost up the employee
and help the person get developed and show up higher performance in
the team.
3) Motivation For The Staff
How will you know which staff needs more motivation and which staff can be provided with
an appreciation? This is the reason, it becomes important to measure up employee
performance.There will be employees who are doing really great and because of them, the
organization is getting high revenue from time to time. You need to appreciate such
employees so that they can keep up this job.

On the other hand, there are some employees who are not performing that well. It is
important to motivate such employees through different ways such as rewards, words, and
others so that they can also perform equally as your star employees.
4) Documentation Of The Performance
There are a number of times when you may need to take a decision of upgrading
an employee to a senior position. But you cannot simply upgrade an employee
only because the position higher to the employee has got vacant.

You need to have a proper evaluation, whether the person will be able to handle
the position well or not. If the person is capable to take care of the position, then
only you should raise his responsibilities, otherwise, this can be a waste for your
organization.

This cannot be known by one-time performance evaluation. It is important to have

a record of the performances to check out the consistency of the employee.
5) Taking Bigger Decisions
There are times when the employer needs to take bigger and crucial decisions such as
eliminating an employee from the team.Again this cannot be done just by one-time evaluation.
It is important to check out the consistency of the employee performance so that the right
decision can be taken up.

So, now as you are aware of the importance of employee performance, let us find out the
ways through which you can measure the performance of your employees.
HOW TO MEASURE?
 1) Use a Checklist
You can use a checklist with Yes-No criteria to quickly find out the
productivities and deficiencies of the employees in different performance areas.
 2) Asking Employee to do Self Evaluation
You can also ask your employees to rate their performance on different
parameters. Using a form with MCQs along with Essay Type Answers can be
useful here.
 3) 360-Degree Feedback
In this technique, you can find out the details of the performance of your
employee from their peers, seniors, supervisors, co-workers and other employees
with whom they work.
HOW TO MEASURE?
 4) MBO or Management by Objectives
In this technique, managers and employees decide objectives
jointly. They finalize individual objectives, alignment of their objectives
with company goals, and how the performance will get measured.

 5) Using Graphics Rating Scales

You can use a scale that has numbers from 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 for
rating the performance of an employee.
3
TRADITIONAL
TRAIT APPRAISAL
These are the old methods of performance appraisal
based on personal qualities like knowledge, capacity,
judgment, initiative, attitude, loyalty, leadership,
judgment etc.
1. Rating Scales:
The numerical scale is prepared that represents the job
evaluation criterion such as the output, initiative,
attendance, attitude, dependability, etc. and ranges from
excellent to poor. The rating scales are one of the easiest
traditional methods of performance appraisal and can be
applied to any job.
2. Checklist:
A checklist of employee traits in the form of statement
is prepared where the rater put a tick mark in “Yes” or
“No” column against the trait checked for each
employee.Once the checklist gets completed the rater
forwards the list to the HR department for the final
evaluation of the employee.
3. Forced Choice Method:
Under this method, the rater is forced to answer the
ready-made statements as given in the blocks of two or
more, about the employees in terms of true or
false.Once he is done with the list, it is forwarded to the
HR department for the final assessment of the
employee.
Thank
YOU
For
LISTE
NING!