Employee Performance Appraisals : A Company 's Best Resource Or Become Its Worst Enemy

An appraisal is one of the most commonly used methods of formal assessment and is used to evaluate and assess the performance of an employee against agreed targets and objectives, with the aim of improving employee performance. Where an employee has been able to achieve their targets, the appraisal can be used to recognise successes. This often helps to increase an employee’s confidence and motivation and can lead to better organisational performance. Many organisations will use the outcomes of an appraisal to identify potential candidates for promotions or even an increase in pay. At the same time, an appraisal meeting may include discussions on underperformance, identifying why this has occurred and how this can be avoided in the future.

Performance appraisal is a method of evaluating the behaviour of employees in the work spot, normally both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of job performance. Performance here refers to the degree of accomplishment of the tasks that make up an individual’s job. It indicates how well an individual is fulfilling the job demands. The purpose of performance appraisal is to update the worker on his progress, gauge his behavior and performance, praise good work, and note opportunities for improvement. A poorly conducted appraisal could cause the worker to lose morale, but a constructive performance appraisal can encourage him to go above and beyond the call of duty. People differ in

Performance appraisal is essential to understand and improve the employee’s performance through HRD. It is viewed that performance appraisal was useful to decide upon employee’s promotion, transfer etc. But recent developments in HRD indicate that performance appraisal is basis for employee development. A performance appraisal is a systematic and periodic process that assesses an individual employee’s job performance and productivity in relation to certain pre-established criteria and organizational objectives. Other aspects of individual employees are considered as well, such as organizational citizenship behavior, accomplishments, potential for future improvement, strengths and weaknesses, etc Performance

An organizational goals can be attained only when people put their greatest efforts. So the organization has to ascertain whether an employee has contributed his or her best performance. Performance appraisal is an objective assessment of an individual’s performance against well-defined benchmarks. The other terms used for performance appraisal are: performance rating, employee assessment, employee performance review, personnel appraisal, performance evaluation, employee evaluation and merit rating. The performance being measured against such factors as job knowledge, quality and quantity of output , initiative, leadership abilities, supervision, dependability, co-operation, judgement, versatility, health, and the like. Assessment

Annual performance reviews are not an effective form of performance management system to measure the employee’s performance because they can be biased, waste of managerial time, too sporadic to make a lasting impact, and can affect the employee’s behavior. All companies strive to be successful at meeting their company goals in a time efficient manner. As time goes on, companies are realizing the key to a successful business is happy employees. Companies must experiment with new methods to find the right process of evaluating employee performance and ensuring that success continues. Many companies use performance appraisals to relay information to the employees about their performance level within the company. Annual performance appraisals are so prevalent that 72% of companies use them to measure employee performance (Fawcett). Though the success of the review to motivate and improve employee performance, greatly depends on how well the manager executes the appraisal. Performance appraisals are important to companies but, the question of at what cost to the employee should it continue still continues to linger.

Managers have always had to make tough decisions in the workplace, but one of the most challenging aspects of their job is the employee performance appraisals. Evaluating an employees’ performance, if done right, will be an objective as possible process. However, the naturally subjective aspects of the evaluation process are what pose many ethical dilemmas. This process customarily comprises of giving constructive feedback to an employee so that they are better able to improve their job performance, but many appraisals are based on lies. This theoretically disqualifies it from being an effective resource from which employers can accurately determine compensation increases, identify those deserving of promotions, cuing the need for progressive discipline and identifying termination candidates (Gilbert,2012,117). Yet, these erroneous official forms are signed and filed away, year after year.

“Performance appraisal” is a discrete, formal, organizationally sanctioned event, usually not occurring more frequently than once or twice a year, which has clearly stated performance dimensions and/or criteria that are used in the evaluation process. Furthermore, it is an evaluation process, in that quantitative scores are often assigned, based on the judged level of the employee‟s job performance on the dimensions or criteria used, and the scores are shared with the employee being evaluated. (Angelo S. DeNisi and Robert D. Pritchard, 2006)

In conducting appraisal, information of the current skills and job behavior will be recorded, evaluated and trained accordingly to their needs. Through performance appraisal, employees’ motivation level can be increased by obtaining feedbacks and companies can know the strength and weaknesses of their staffs. This will improve understanding between organization and employees on performance standards. Companies will be able to identify

Most organizations today have an employee appraisal format that is used to rate the yearly job performance of each of their employees. This employee review process is vital to organizations to help guide and motivate their employees in order to meet the overall goals of the company. This process is used to give feedback to each employee on their performance as it relates to the expectations put forth in their position expectations. Employee evaluations are key components when deciding on promotions, demotions, pay increases, or employee terminations.

It is been said by some that appraisal cannot serve the needs of evaluation and development at the same time. it must be one or the other. The researcher believe there must be an acceptable middle ground, where the need to evaluate employees objectively, and the need to encourage and develop them, can be balanced.

One of the most fundamental issues that the organization can face with is to introduce the appropriate appraisal scheme. The purpose of appraisal is to enable a kind of assessment of the individuals working in the organization. It provides a basis of motivating the staff, improving their performance and making reward decisions. Firstly, people tend to work harder if they are given feedback of their job and they express a desire for recognition. Secondly, assessment increases motivation, by reasonable distribution of rewards. This gives incentives to people to pay more attention to their job and work harder in the future.

Performance appraisal has grown to become an essential tool in every organization today. It has grown rapidly over the past decade with around 70% employees being appraised in 2011, rising from 43% in 2004. (WERS data, 2011). Performance appraisal allows an organization to measure the performances of its employees and use it as a comparison or decision – making tool for future objectives. However, despite its importance, it has become a commonly criticized HRM practice. (Gary et all) summarized performance appraisal into a real life example by comparing PA systems to seat belts in how people deem them necessary but only use them reluctantly to satisfy legal requirements or organization procedures. This can be related back to managers and supervisors responsible for appraisals in organizations. This essay will look deeper into the growing problems created by performance appraisal. Also, there will be a brief review of how some techniques and philosophies of appraisal are affecting modern organizations and its employees.

Appraisal performance of individual, groups and organizations is something important for all organizations to succeed and achieve its objectives. Also it is used to evaluate the performance of the employees and monitor them to achieve the desired goal.

In the organizational structure the performance appraisal of the employees is an important and key factor for the success of the organization. It is a practice which is established for the assessment of the employees performance and findings ways to improve the performance. The mehtod of performance appraisal has am impact on the pay of individuals, and other organizational success. This process is also designed to deal with problem behavior. The process of performance appraisal is the best way to improve the performance of organization because with the help of this process the employees know their weak points and try to overcome those to improve the organizational efficiency (Rasch, 2010)

The aim of this research proposal is to evaluate the impact of performance appraisal approach on employees and also investigates the relation between performance appraisal and employees performance.