Performance Appraisals: The Hiwassee Boys Soccer Team

Performance appraisal is an important issue in human resource management and has a significant effect in the performance of an organisation. It is the system of evaluating the performance of employees regarding the accomplishment of their responsibilities and determining their potential to grow and develop. Bias in the evaluation process can affect the accuracy and appropriateness of the performance appraisal. Bias is a serious issue because it affects the ability to make appropriate decisions about the promotion of employees. A performance appraisal system that works to the disadvantage of members of a group can also pose legal issues.

As a leader or supervisor it is important to have a game plan to keep your team looking their best no matter what type of field it’s in. As we look into the world of athletics and Performance Appraisal we will be watching a Hiwassee soccer game to pick out a play to test the Performance Appraisal. The Performance Appraisal is a method used to point out all of their flaws by an outsiders point of view. This method is supposed to help the player see what he or she needs to work on. This will also help us see if traditional performance appraisals effective in the field of athletics.

Performance appraisal is a method which is increasingly used to evaluate employees to determine the degree to which they are performing effectively and encourage them to direct their energies towards organizational performance. Although the appraisal is being practiced, there are criticisms made against the system which generally arise from within the Orthodox and radical management frame work.

What are performance appraisals? Simply put, they are the evaluation of goals that are pre-determined and set by both the employee and organization (Harvard Business Press, 2009). They are used to measure an employee’s performance and team performance.

A performance appraisal is one of the most important factors in any organization and can be one of the greatest tools used to record employee production. Every organization has to have goals and objectives established and the employee has to be involved in this process. By conducting performance appraisal will improve productivity and also the morale of the employees.

Performance Appraisals will help to monitor standards, objectives, expectations, responsibilities, tasks, training needs and career succession planning. Also the employee appraisals are used for the evaluation of annual pay and grading reviews, which also coincides with the next year business planning.

Development of a performance appraisal system that is effective in a human service organization is of benefit for the organization and the employees. For a performance appraisal system to be effective, the system has to be strategic, designed to fit the specific needs of the organization, non-discriminatory, non-bias, with correct implementation and administration. Many different components, must to be incorporated to make this type of system beneficial for all who use it, and all who are evaluated by the system.

The appraisal system includes traits, personal characteristics and competencies of the performer such as communication, decision making and, appearance and work habits instead of solely focusing on the outcomes produced during a certain period.

The appraisal process has incorporated an integrative approach, a mechanism to scrutinize efficiency as well as effectiveness of the player’s performance. The efficiency underweights the value added by the individual player in team performance and effectiveness evaluates the final result, i.e. overall team performance.

The reasons provided for failure in performance management versus performance appraisal discipline gap, accountability, measurement scarcity or overload, lack of balance and failure to assess impact. “There are two primary purposes of performance appraisal: evaluative and developmental. The evaluative purpose is intended to inform people of their performance standing. The collected performance data are frequently used to reward high performance and to punish poor performance.” (Smither, 2009) The developmental purpose is intended to identify problems in employees performing the assigned task. The collected performance data are used to provide necessary skill training or professional development. “The purpose of performance appraisal must be clearly communicated both to raters and rates, because their reactions to the appraisal process are significantly different depending on the intended purpose. Failure to inform about the purpose or misleading information about the purpose may result in inaccurate and biased appraisal reports.” (Cascio, 1998)

There are numerous reasons why organizations evaluate their staff, the main reason being to track employee progress and performance compared to expected objectives. I do not contest that performance evaluations play an important role in assessing the overall performance of an employee. However, given the large leaps taken with regards to technology and organizational changes within organizations, I think that performance evaluations have failed to advance at the same pace. The disconnect occurs when performance evaluations are used as the only organizational quality control tool rather than a source of motivation for progress and career advancement. Though I think employees should be evaluated, I don’t necessarily believe that it needs to be done in such a formal manner. I’m an extremely positive minded person who is not particularly attracted to this idea of stocking biases and negativity all year long only to open the box on the day of evaluations. In addition, I have a particular interest and have had some training in the field human performance improvement, which makes me even more skeptical of the effects of performance evaluations because I know that a majority of problems linked to poor performance are linked to the complexity and/or lack of understanding of processes, tools and job aids. As such, evaluating a job performer without weighing his work processes and tasks is clearly ineffective. An alternative to the traditional performance

I am proposing the Behavioral Anchored Rating scales (BARS). This method mainly bases its evaluations on key and specific behaviors that are required for each employee position in the organization. BARS technique is designed to show the benefits of the quantitative and qualitative data in the performance appraisal process. BARS mainly compare an employee performance against the specific behavior that is anchored to the numerical ratings (Zaffron, Feb 2009).

The process by which a manager or consultant examines and evaluates an employee 's work behavior by comparing it with preset standards, documents the results of the comparison, and uses the results to provide feedback to the employee to show where improvements are needed and why.

Performance appraisals are used to rate several things in organizations in regards to employees and their performance. There are several types of performance appraisals that can be given. The textbook mentions three different types of data that performance appraisals collect. The types of data include trait data, behavioral data, and outcome data. Three types of performance appraisals that will be discussed further are the unstructured method, 360-degree feedback, and the grading and checklist method.

​According to Nigro, Nigro and Kellough, (2014), performance appraisal refers to the systematic performance appraisal of employees in order to measure their skills and talent for the purpose of further personnel growth and development. Performance appraisal is mostly carried out in the private sector where the performance of employees is crucial as the organizations are focused on profits. However, the difference between the aims of private organizations and the public organizations introduces a problem when it comes to measuring the performance of civil servants. Thus most civil servants may not be overly enthusiastic about implementation of performance appraisal in their organization because of some inherent flaws of most of the techniques used, for example, ranking is prone to biasness of the appraiser which may in turn affect the morale or even employment status of a civil servant. This paper will thus seek to address the issues that affect implementation of performance appraisal systems in public organizations as well as providing possible solutions that can be implemented in the public organizations.