Pros and Cons of Performance Appraisals

Performance appraisal is to evaluate an employee’s performance within an organization by concentrating on identifying, measuring and developing job performance standards. This method serves as a systematic and periodic process that assesses the employee job performance and productivity against their employer’s goals and objectives. Must be remembered, “performance reviews might not ever be fun [within an organization] but they can be effective and powerful [in] ways of creating more loyalty among team members when they’re done right” (Jackson, 2012). That is to say, the paper will entail the strategic advantages of performance appraisal, potential forms of bias within the appraisal system as well as how performance appraisal can contribute to the achievement of strategic objectives. Overall, performance appraisal within an organization is an effective way to increase employee’s job performance and help employees with their own personal success.

The strategic advantages of performance appraisal are alignment, optimized performance, succession planning and feedback. HR benefit of using this strategic advantage called alignment in order to align employee performance within an organization. Aligning employee performance is an organizational goal to evaluate how employees, job performance benefits and how these employees should fulfill that particular role. With attention to “carefully [analyze] and review of job descriptions to align duties and responsibilities of a given job to its [employees departments] and ultimately with [organization] objectives” (Kokemuller, 2017). Another strategic advantage that employer’s use to evaluate and motivate employees to better perform within the organization is optimized performance. Optimize performance gives the employer’s opportunities to praise their employees for good job performance by reaching the organization objectives successfully. In like manner for employers to challenge unsuspected employees for a chance to grow and develop better job performance skills for the purpose of to reach the organization objectives through a set of standards of expectation to accomplish it.

Equally
important strategic advantage that employers evaluate employees’ opportunities
to discuss career objectives and set goals to attain them is through succession
planning. Succession planning helps the organization to identify the qualifies
candidates to take over that key position when that employee retires or leave.
In case the strategic and well-planned evaluations which conducted annually or
periodically by the organization upper management to discuss the potential
skills and experience they see within the employee to perform the necessary
task for that identified role is open. Lastly, the strategic advantage that
offers the organization “a chance to find out what employees need in term of
support and resources is feedback. An effective measure for an organization to
“[give] feedback to the [number of employees] with the purpose of encouraging
them to correct any [of their weaknesses] in their performance to stay the
course of accomplishing [them above average]” (Dessler, 1999). Given that the
organization allows their employee’s opportunities to ask questions, express concerns
and suggestions to a greater understanding of how to better equip them to
deliver the best performance possible. In view of the organization, upper
management will appear humble and willing to find out what employees need to
reach the organization objectives that they happen to not have to achieve them.
As a can be seen, the strategic advantages of performance give employees better
job performance evaluations within the organization to reach their goal
successfully.

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The
potential forms of bias within the appraisal system are contrast, halo, horn,
leniency, and recency. First common performance appraisal bias is the contrast
that “occurs when the manager compares an employee’s performance to the other
employees instead of the company standards” (Lauby, 2013). The goal or standard
that has been set is a problem in regard to a high-performance employee might
end up at the bottom even though he or she is exceeding company standards.
Second, common performance appraisal bias is a halo is an employee that is
rated highly in all areas of their evaluation because of the one thing he or
she really great at doing. Behind the scenes that particular employee causes
confusion or disorder in the organization and the other employees do not
respect him or her for it. Third, common performance appraisal bias is a horn
(i.e. the flip side of the halo) an employee that is rated poorly in all areas
of their evaluation because of the one thing he or she really bad at doing. For
instance, the HR administrative assistant who is great at everything but
failing. Therefore, the organization has to hire a temp to get the filling
caught up due to the HR administrative bad job performance putting the filing
off till later.

Fourth,
common performance appraisal bias is leniency is a team leader that gives
everyone on his or her team a satisfactory rating. In view of the team leader
is burned out and that review does not require any written support statement.
Despite the team leader not required giving a written support on its reviews
would affect the employee that has poor performance that needs correcting.
Fifth common performance appraisal bias is recency is “the employee’s most
recent behavior becomes the primary focus of the review” (Lauby, 2013). In the
event that a poor performed employee does a task well at work than their past
performance is forgotten. But a high performed employee does one mistake, then
it weighs done their review greatly. Ultimately, the potential forms of bias
within the appraisal system need to rid of altogether so that employees be
evaluated fairly in the organization.

The morale, budgeting tools within the organization and a set of goals are, how performance appraisal can contribute to the achievement of strategic objectives. First, morale is an important factor in creating a productive workforce in the organization. Including “to [identifying] the weak points in [the employee’s] job performance and then [help he or she] to create a plan to
combat that weakness” (George, 2018). On the positive side of this course of
action is the upper management tone with employees by assisting them with their
development within the organization and its goals. Second, budgeting tools is
“the analysis of performance appraisals, the company can determine which
employee is due for a raise and which employees are not [in the year’s budget]”
(George, 2018). For instance, the money associated with having the employee
terminated is put back into the budget by the same token, replacing the
terminated employee is a factor as well. Seeing that the organization needs a
budget tool to make decisions that will benefit their strategic goals in the
long run. Lastly, set goals is a strategic objective for organizations to reach
their goals. The performance evaluations are discussions between the employers
and employees about professional development and the strategic goal is to
measure the success of the employee. In effect, the employee-manager
relationship improves greatly in the workplace. All things considered, the
morale, budgeting tool within the organization and a set of goals are, how
performance appraisal can contribute to the achievement of strategic objectives
in a company.

When
an employee performance appraisal presents a clear standard of expectations
that are arranged within the organizational goals; employee job performance
will increase greatly. alignment, optimized performance, succession planning
and feedback are the strategic advantages of performance appraisal that would
allow employees better job performance evaluations within the organization to
its goal. Contrast, halo, horn, leniency, and recency are the five potential
forms of bias within the appraisal system that needs to focus on the employees
evaluated fairly in the organization and free of bias. Lastly, the morale,
budgeting tool within the organization and a set of goals are, how performance
appraisal can contribute to the achievement of strategic objectives in a
company to become successful. All in all, performance appraisal within an
organization is an effective way to increase employee’s job performance through
the company strategic objectives and helping employees with their own personal
success without bias in their evaluations. 

References

• Ayers, R. S. (2015). Aligning Individual and Organizational Performance: Goal Alignment in Federal Government Agency Performance Appraisal Programs. Public Personnel Management, 44(2), 169-191 23p. doi:10.1177/0091026015575178
• Dessler,Gary (1999). Human Resource Management: essentials of management, Prentice Hall.
• Jackson, E. (2012). Ten Biggest Mistakes Bosses Make In Performance Reviews – Forbes. Information for the World’s Business Leaders – Forbes.com. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/09/ten-reasons-performance-reviews-are-done-terribly/#37fd38635ee0
• Lauby, Sharlyn (2018). Overcoming 5 Common Performance Appraisal Biases. HR bartender. Retrieved from https://www.hrbartender.com/2013/training/overcoming-5-common-performance-appraisal-biases/
• N., George. “Strategic Objectives in Performance Appraisals.” Small Business – Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/strategic-objectives-performance-appraisals-1915.html. Accessed 29 July 2018.
• Neil, Kokemuller (2017). What Are the Strategic Benefits of Performance Appraisals? bizfluen. Retrieved from https://bizfluent.com/info-12002472-strategic-benefits-performance-appraisals.html
• Youssef-Morgan, C. (2015). Human resource management. (2nd ed.).  San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUBUS303.15.1