Methods of Performance Appraisal

 

METHODS OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

 

Traditional approach 

 

 Traditionally, performance appraisal has been used as just a method for determining and justifying the salaries of the employees. Than it began to be used a tool for determining rewards (a rise in the pay) and punishments (a cut in the pay) for the past performance of the employees.  This approach was a past oriented approach which focused only on the past performance of the employees i.e. during a past specified period of  time. This approach did not consider the developmental of the and employee performance i.e.aspects his training development needs or career developmental possibilities. The primary concern of the traditional approach is to judge the performance of the organization as a whole by the past performances of  its employees Therefore, this approach is also called as the overall approach.

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1. ESSAY OR FREE FORM APPRAISAL 

Under this method, the rater is asked to express the strong as well as weak points of the employee’s behavior. While preparing the essay on the employee, the rater considers the following factors: (i) Job (i) knowledge and potential of the employee employee; ;  Job (ii) Employee’s understanding of the company’s programmes, program mes, policies, objectives, etc.; (iii) The employee’s relations with co-workers and superiors; (iv) The employee’s general planning, organizing and controlling ability; (v) The attitudes and perceptions of  the employee, in general. . Aof major drawback method is the inseparability the bias of the of the evaluator.BPL, Birla 3M, Wheels India and Bata follows this method.

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2. STRAIGHT RANKING METHOD  

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 This is one of the oldest and simplest techniques of  performance appraisal. In this method, the appraiser ranks the employees from the best to the poorest on the basis of their overall performance. It is quite useful for a comparative evaluation. Bajaj tempo,SPIC and BASF use this method.

 

3. PAIRED COMPARISON  

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A better technique of comparison than the straight ranking method, this method compares c ompares each employee with all others in the group, one at a time. After After all the comparisons on the basis of the overall comparisons, the employees are given the final rankings. Godrej soaps,KOPRAN, NOCIL and OTIS follows this method.

 

INCIDENTS METHODS 

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Under this method, the manager prepares prepares lists of  statements of very effective and ineffective behavior of an employee. These critical incidents or events represent the outstanding or poor behavior of employees on the job. The manager maintains logs on each employee, whereby he periodically records critical incidents of the workers behavior. At the end of the rating period, these recorded critical incidents are used in the evaluation of the work workers’ ers’ performance. An example of a good critical incident of a sales assistant is the following:

 

An example of a good critical incident of a sales

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assistant is the following:  July 20 – The sales clerk patiently attended to the customers complaint. He is polite, prompt, enthusiastic in solving the customers’ problem. 

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On the other hand the bad critical incident may  appear as under:

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20 – The sales assistant stayed 45 minutes over  on his break during the busiest part of the day. He failed the storestubborn manager’s call thrice. Heto is answer lazy,, negligent, lazy and  uninterested in work.  work. 

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ITC Classic finance, Voltas, VST Industries etc follows this method.

 

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 This method suffers however from the following limitations: 

Negative incidents may be more noticeable than positive incidents.

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supervisors have a tendency to unload a series of complaints about incidents during an annual performance review session.

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It results in very close supervision which may not be

liked by the employee. liked   The recording of incidents may be a chore for the manager concerned, who may be too busy or forget to do it.  

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5. FIELD REVIEW

In this method, a senior member of the HR department or a training officer discusses and interviews the supervisors to evaluate and rate their respective subordinates. subordinates. A major drawback of this method is that it is a very time consuming method. But this method helps to reduce the superiors’ personal bias.  

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6. CHECKLIST METHOD 

A checklist represents, in its simplest form, a set of objectives or descriptive statements about the employe employee e and his behavior. If the rater believes strongly that the employee possesses listed heAchecks the item; otherwise, a heparticular leaves the itemtrait, blank. more recent variation of the checklist method is the weighted list. Under this, the value of each question may be weighted equally or certain questions may be weighted more heavily than others. The following are some of the sample questions in the checklist.

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Is the employee really interested in the task assigned? Yes/No

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Is he respected by his colleagues (coworkers) Yes/No

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Does he give respect to his superiors? Yes/No Does he follow instructions properly? Yes/No Does he make mistakes frequently?

Yes/No

A rating score from the checklist helps the manager in evaluation of the performance of the employee. The checklist method has a serious limitation. The rater may be biased in distinguishing distinguishin g the positive and negative questions. He may assign biased weights to the questions. Another limitation could be that this method is expensive and time consuming. Finally, it becomes difficult for the manager to assemble, analyze and weigh a number of statements about the employee’s employee’ s characteristics, contributions and behaviors. In spite of these limitations, the checklist method is most frequently used in the employee’s performance evaluation. WIDIA, CEAT, Modern threads and BOC uses this method.

 

7.GRAPHIC RATING SCALE Perhaps the most commonly used method of  Perhaps performance evaluation is the graphic rating scale. Of course Of  course,, it is also one of the oldest methods of  evaluation in use. Under this method, a printed form, as shown below, is used to evaluate the performance of an employee. A variety of traits may be used in these types of rating devices, the most common being the quantity and quality of work. The rating scales can also be adapted by including traits that the company considers important for effectiveness on the job. A model of a graphic rating scale is given below.

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Quantity of work: Unsatisfactory Volume of work under normal working conditions

Quality of work: Neatness, thoroughness and accuracy of work Knowledge of job A clear understanding of  the factors connected with the job Attitude: Exhibits enthusiasm and cooperativeness on the job Dependability: Conscientious, thorough, reliable, accurate, with respect to attendance, reliefs, lunch breaks, etc.

Cooperation: Willingness and ability to work with others to produce desired goals.

Fair

Satisfactory

Good

Outstanding

 

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From the graphic rating scales, excerpts can be obtained about the performance perf ormance standards standards of  employees. For instance, if the employee has serious gapsrudimentary in technical-pro technical-professional fessional knowledge (knows only phases of job); lacks the knowledge to bring about an increase in productivity; productivi ty; is reluctant to make decisions on his own (on even when he makes decisions they are unreliabl unreliable eility; and fails substandard); substandar declines to accept responsibility; responsib to pland); ahead effectively; w astes wastes and misuses resources; resources; etc., then it can safely be inferred inferr ed that the standards of the performance of  the employee are dismal and disappointing. BIRLA  Jute uses this method.

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8. FORCED DISTRIBUTION   This

method was developed to eliminate bias and the preponderance of high ratings that might occur in some organization organizations. s. The primary purpose of the forced choice method is to correct the tendency of a rater to give consistently high or low ratings to all the employees. This method makes mak es use of several sets of pair phrases, two of  which may be positive and two negative and the rater is asked to indicate which of the four phrases is the most and least descriptive of a particular worker. Actually, the statement items are grounded grounded in such a way that the rater cannot easily judge which statements apply to the most effective employee. The following box is a classic illustration of the forced choice items in organizations.

 

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Table: Forced Choice Items 1. Least Most A Does not anticipate difficulties A B Grasps explanatio explanations ns easily and quickly B C Does not waste time C D Very easy to talk to D 2. Least Most A Can be a leader A B Wastes time on unproductive things B C At all times, cool and calm C D Smart worker D

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  The favorable qualities earn a plus credit and the unfavorable ones earn the reverse. The worker gets over plus when the positive factors override the negative ones or when one of the negative phrases is checked as being insignificantly rated.

 

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 They overall objectivity is increas increased ed by using this method in evaluation of employee’s performance, because the rater does not know how high or low l ow he is evaluating theThis individual as however, he has nohas access to the scoring key. method, a strong limitation. In the preparation of sets of phrases trained technicians are needed and as such the method becomes very expensive. Further, managers may feel frustrated rating the employees ‘in the dark’. Finally, the results of the forced choice method may not be useful for training employees because the rater himself does not know how he is evaluating the worker. In spite of these limitations, the forced choice techniques is quite popular. USHA,SPL,, and JCT USHA,SPL J CT follows this method.

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9.

CONFIDENTIAL

REPORTS 

It is mostly used in governm government ent organizations. It is a descriptive report prepared, generally at the end of every year, by the employee’s immediate superior. The report highlights theThe strengths and theimpressions subordinate. report is notweaknesses databased. of The of the superior about the subordinate are merely recorded there. It does not offer any feedback to the appraisee. The appraisee is not very sure about why his ratings have fallen despite his best efforts, why others are rated high when compared to him, how to rectify his mistakes, if any; on what basis he is going to be evaluated next year, etc. Since the report is generally not made public and hence no feedback is available, the subjective analysis of the superior is likely to be hotly contested. In recent years, due to pressure from courts and trade unions, the details of a negative confidential report are given to the appraisee.

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10. GROUP APRAISAL Under this method, an employee is appraised by a group of appraisers. This groups consists of the

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immediate of the employee other supervisorssupervisors who have close contact withto the employee’s work, manager or head of the the department and consultants. The head of the department or manager may be the chairman of the group and the immediate supervisor may act as the coordinator for the group activities. This group uses any one techniques discussed earlier earlier.Kinetic .Kinetic Honda, Birla VXL, and Blue Star follows this method.