Effective Performance Appraisals

Effective performance appraisals have many benefits and are comprised with many organizational objectives in mind. A strategic appraisal will contribute to a firm's ability to reach desired organizational goals. This paper will detail the strategic advantages of appraisals, forms of bias in appraisals, and discuss how an appraisal can be used to achieve organizational objectives.

Strategic Advantages

Conducting a proper employee appraisal has several benefits, which may support several key components of a human resource manager's job. Managers and human resource managers can learn a lot about their employees through the use of performance appraisals. Personality traits, ability to adapt, motivational factors, efficiency, productivity, willingness to follow procedures, leadership style and skills, and more are characteristics that can be assessed and discovered in a well-designed process. This information can be used, as will be discussed later, to achieve organizational objectives.

Sometimes goals are set, which are not reasonable or attainable. If a majority of employees struggle to meet a particular goal, it may be discovered using the graphic rating scale method. This method measures quantitative performance using standardized criteria, which makes the process more objective than other subjective methods commonly used, such as the narrative technique.

Many organizations employ the use of personality testing to determine a good fit within the organization or for a particular type of job. Performance appraisal results can be used to develop these tests. Appraisals detail behavior traits, such as how positive one is about their job, which often correlates to how closely they follow procedures. This might be critical in a position in which there is less supervision than other positions and safety is critical to the mission success. Additionally, analyzing job performance is important to the job design process, which includes developing job descriptions and specifications. Data obtained with performance appraisals sometimes make it clear that job redesign is necessary.

Performance appraisals detail areas that employees need further training. Using job specific objective methods to discover employee strengths and weaknesses may help managers determine the most appropriate areas to train in. If two-thirds of a department struggle with one aspect of the job, training on that area can greatly improve efficiencies and advance organizational objectives.

Last, performance appraisals are helpful in promoting a positive workplace by rewarding employees who meet and surpass expectations of the organization. Many organizations use a grading system to determine whether workers fall below expectations, meet them, or exceed them. This grading system often reflects the amount of compensation the employee receives and is often helpful in selecting candidates for promotions.

Forms of Bias

There are many forms of biases that one needs to consider such as the mood a manager is in when performing the evaluation. Studies indicate that managers have tendency to recall positive events more frequently when they are in a good mood at the time of the appraisal (Boachie-Mensah & Seidu, 2012). Managers may be less likely to recall positive accomplishments an employee has made if he or she is in a bad mood at the time the appraisal is conducted.

Bias in performance appraisals can threaten the effectiveness of the process. Biases may include stereotyping, the halo effect, fundamental