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Chapter 2.4.3, Problems with Performance Appraisal:
For many years employers have been evaluated against standards of personal traits.
These range from ten to personal characteristics such as the ability to get along with people, leadership analytical competence, industry, judgement and initiative. The list may also include such work-related characteristics as job knowledge, ability to carry through an assignment, production, or cost results or success in seeing that plans and instructions are carried out (Bitner, 2000). However there are practical problems of the trait approach to appraisal. This is because the valuation cannot be objective and as such employees who receive less than the top rating feel that they have been unfairly dealt with.
Other scholars such as Porter et al (1990) have described trait criteria as nebulous and as such , raters are dealing with a blunt tool, and have argued that subordinates are likely to be vague about what qualities they are being rated on.
He (Porter), further argues that since the principal purpose of appraisal is to provide a basis upon which to plan for improvement, trait evaluation provides for tangible things to discuss, little on which participants can agree as facts and therefore little mutual understanding of what is required to obtain improvement.
The Public Review and Reorganization Commission Report (1989-90), measuring and managing performance are two most difficult issues Public Officers would face under the new approach to performance appraisal because appraisers usually tend to blame the appraisees when they observe poor performance while appraisees also blame external factors for poor performance. This tendency is called actor/observer bias. According to the report, Managers would be required to understand what motivates their human resources as the balance of power moves towards employees and commitment replaces command and control as the driving philosophy in organizations that have adopted this new approach to performance appraisal .Learning to use the New Staff Performance Appraisal Instrument as a tool for improving performance but not as a tool to apportion blame is yet another challenge, the report emphasizes.
Even if the system is well designed, problems can arise if the raters (usually supervisors) are not co-operative and well trained. (McGregor, 1957).Supervisors may not be comfortable with the process of evaluation, or what Douglas McGregor called ‘Playing God’. This is often because they have not adequately trained, or have not participated in the design of the programme. He emphasizes that, inadequate training of raters can lead to a series of problems in completing performance evaluations, including; problems with standards of evaluation, halo effect, leniency or harshness, recency of events error, contrast effects and personal bias.
First impressions (primacy effect): The appraiser’s first impressions of a candidate may color his evaluation of all subsequent behavior. In the case of negative primacy effect, the employee may seem to do nothing right; in the case of a positive primacy effect, the employee can do no wrong .In most of the traditional performance evaluation systems, raters judge past performance and attempt to report their judgments using any of the performance techniques. Because performance evaluation is used for making decisions that affect the employees, the rater is placed in a difficult and somewhat antagonistic role. (Ivancevich, 1998).
The Halo effect occurs when one aspect of the subordinate’s performance affects the rater’s evaluation of other performance dimensions. If a worker has few absences, his supervisor might give the worker a high rating in all other areas of work. Similarly an employee might be rated high on performance simply because he had a good dress sense and comes to office punctually.
The rater’s bias is in the other direction, where one negative quality of the employee is being rated harshly. For example, the ratee does not smile normally, so he cannot get along with people. This is called horn effect.
Depending on rater’s own mental make-up at the time of appraisal, raters may be rated very strictly or very leniently. Appraisers generally find evaluating others difficult, especially where negative ratings have to be given. A professor might hesitate to fail a candidate when all other students have cleared the examination. The Leniency error can render an appraisal system ineffective. If everyone is to be rated high, the system has not done anything to differentiate among employees.
An alternative to the leniency effect is the central tendency, which occurs when appraisers rate all employees as average performers. For example, a professor, with a view to play it safe, might give a class grades nearly equal to B, regardless of the differences in individual performance. Stereotyping is a mental picture that an individual holds about a person because of that person’s sex, age, religion, and caste. By generalizing behavior on the basis of such blurred images, the rater grossly overestimates or underestimates a persons’ performance. For example, employees from rural areas might be rated poorly by raters having a sophisticated urban background if they view rural background negatively. For recency effect the rater gives greater weight age to recent occurrences than earlier performance. For example, an excellent performance that may be six or seven months old is conveniently forgotten while giving a poor rating to an employee’s performance which is not so good in recent weeks. Alternatively, the appraisal process may suffer due to a ‘spill over effect’ which takes place when past performance influences present ratings.
Research studies show that employees are likely to feel more satisfied with their appraisal result if they have the chance to talk freely and discuss their performance. It is also more likely that such employees will be better able to meet future performance goals. (Barie,etal,2001).
Barrie and Sow (2001), claim there must be standards of comparison. People need to know how well they are doing at their jobs and where they could improve. It is important to keep in mind that appraisals do not equate to criticism. It may be necessary to explain the importance of completing tasks within timelines or changing the technique of doing a task.
Unfortunately, many performance appraisals only frustrate the employee by adding more tasks to what appears to be an already overloaded agenda,’ they assert’.