Iyah

• Employee performance evaluation


  A process used by organizations to give employees feedback on their job performance and formally document that performance
• Most companies conduct employee performance evaluations once per year
• Effective employee performance evaluation


  • Involves clear criteria, regular feedback, fairness, and opportunities for growth
  • Methods include reviews, feedback sessions, and performance metrics analysis
  • Fosters accountability, engagement, and improvement in the workplace, contributing to overall success
• Evaluating employee performance


  1. Determine the reason for evaluating

  2. Identify environmental and cultural limitations

  3. Determine who will evaluate performance

  4. Select the best appraisal methods to accomplish your goals

  5. Train raters
• Reason for evaluating employee performance

  • Improve performance
  • Give raises based on performance
• Forced-choice rating scale


  A method of performance appraisal in which a supervisor is given several behaviors and is forced to choose which of them is most typical of the employee
• 360-degree feedback


  An excellent source for improving employee performance but is not appropriate for determining salary increases
• Common uses/goals for performance appraisal

  • Providing employee feedback and training
  • Determining salary increases
  • Making promotion decisions
  • Making termination decisions
  • Conducting personnel research
• Who gives the evaluations

  • Supervisors
  • Peers
  • Subordinates
  • Customers
  • Self-appraisal
• Supervisor ratings


  • The most common source of performance appraisal, with 74% of organizations relying solely on direct supervisor evaluations
  • Supervisors may not observe every detail of an employee's behavior, they assess performance based on outcomes
• Peer ratings


  • Peers witness behavior directly, while supervisors observe outcomes
  • Reliable peer ratings require raters to be similar and well-acquainted with the rated employee, correlating highly with supervisor ratings and predicting future success
  • Employees often react more negatively to negative feedback from peers than from experts
• Types of performance dimensions

  • Trait-focused
  • Competency-focused
  • Task-focused
  • Goal-focused
  • Contextual performance
• Trait-focused performance dimensions


  • Concentrate on employee attributes like dependability, honesty, and courtesy
  • Despite their common usage, these systems are not effective as they provide vague feedback, hindering employee development and growth
• Competency-focused performance dimensions


  • Shift the focus from employee traits to their specific knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs)
  • Examples include writing skills, oral presentation skills, or driving skills
  • Advantages: Organizing dimensions based on competencies makes it easier to provide feedback and suggest corrective actions for deficiencies
• Task-focused performance dimensions


  • Categorize performance criteria based on the similarity of tasks performed
  • Each task-focused dimension typically encompasses several competencies
• Goal-focused performance dimensions


  • Organize performance appraisal based on the goals to be achieved by the employee
  • Advantages: It helps employees understand the purpose behind expected behaviors
• Contextual performance


  • Assesses both technical job performance and contributions to the organizational environment
  • Contextual performance is crucial as it contributes significantly to organizational success and tends to be consistent across various roles, unlike task performance
• Weighing performance dimensions


  • Philosophically, some dimensions may hold more organizational importance than others, justifying their higher weighting
  • Differential weighting may mitigate biases, such as racial biases
  • Advantages: Some tasks are more important than others
  • Disadvantages: Weighing dimensions makes ratings more difficult to compute and communicate the ratings to employees
• Methods of rating employee performance

  • Employee comparisons
  • Objective measures
  • Supervisor ratings
• Employee comparisons


  • Employees are compared to one another instead of having their performance individually rated
  • Rank Order Method: Employees ranked by performance on relevant dimensions
  • Paired Comparisons: Compares every pair of employees to determine the better performer
  • Forced Distribution Method (a.k.a. "Rank and Yank"): Predetermined percentage of employees placed in each of five categories
• Objective measures


  • Also known as hard criteria
  • Include quantifiable measures such as quantity of work, quality of work, attendance, and safety
• Quantity of work evaluation

  • Assesses performance by counting relevant job behaviors
  • Examples include number of units sold, number of items assembled, and number of arrests made
  • Quantity measures can be misleading as various factors besides ability influence the quantity of work
• Attendance evaluation


  • Divided into three criteria: absenteeism, tardiness, and tenure
  • Absenteeism and tardiness directly impact performance appraisal, with importance varying based on job nature
  • Tenure used primarily for research purposes in evaluating selection decisions
• Supervisor ratings


  • Most commonly used method for evaluating performance
  • Supervisors assess employee performance in each dimension
  • Graphic Rating Scale is the most common rating scale
  • Behavioral Checklists comprise lists of behaviors, expectations, or results for each dimension
  • Comparison with Other Employees involves rating employee performance on a dimension by comparing it with other employees
  • Frequency of Desired Behaviors rates behaviors based on how often they occur
  • Performance Expectation Rating Method rates employees based on the extent to which their behavior meets organizational expectations
• Frame-of-reference training


  • A method of training raters in which the rater is provided with job-related information, a chance to practice ratings, examples of ratings made by experts, and the rationale behind the expert ratings
  • Helps raters communicate the organization's definition of effective performance and get them to apply the same standards
• Steps in performance appraisal system

  1. Train Raters

  2. Observe and Document Performance

  3. Evaluate Performance

  4. Communicate Appraisal Results to Employees

  5. Terminate Employees

  6. Monitor the Legality and Fairness of the Appraisal System
• Frame-of-reference training


  A method of training raters in which the rater is provided with job-related information, a chance to practice ratings, examples of ratings made by experts, and the rationale behind the expert ratings
• Critical incidents


  A method of performance appraisal in which the supervisor records the employee's behaviours that were observed on the job and rate the employee on the basis of that record
• Distribution errors in performance appraisal

  • Leniency error
  • Central tendency error
  • Strictness error
  • Halo errors
  • Proximity error
  • Contrast errors
  • Assimilation
• Low reliability across raters is due to raters committing rating errors, having different standards and ideas about an ideal employee, and seeing different behaviors of the same employee
• Recency effect in performance appraisal - recent behaviors are given more weight than behaviors that occurred earlier in the evaluation period
• Infrequent observation - supervisors do not see most of an employee's behavior and make inferences based on completed work or employee personality traits
• Emotional state


  The amount of stress the supervisor operates affects their performance ratings
• Bias


  Raters who like the employees being rated may be more lenient and less accurate with their ratings than raters who neither like nor dislike their employees
• Employment-at-will doctrine


  The ability to terminate employees without any reason
• Reasons for terminating employees

  • Probationary Period
  • Violation of Company Rules
  • Inability to perform
  • Reduction in Force (Layoff)
• The termination meeting


  1. Prior to the meeting

  2. During the meeting

  3. After the meeting
• Performance appraisal systems are subject to the same legal standards that apply to other employment decisions