Getting The Most Out Of Performance Appraisals

Getting the most out of performance appraisals

Performance appraisal offers more promise for improving employee and organizational productivity than any other human resource system. Holding an effective performance review is a characteristic that distinguishes more successful companies from less successful ones.

The “right” appraisal system is not necessarily the current research favorite or the one that is in use at another company, it is the one that best fits the particular organization and its management.

How an appraisal system is introduced and installed is likely to be as important as what type of system is developed. An appraisal system that is forced into an organization by corporate management without consultation with other management levels, or that is introduced by human resources department without support from the managers, probably will die really quickly. An introduction and installation strategy must sell the new system to the organization, building a general base of acceptance and ownership by the eventual users.

There are three organization and management variables that exert a special force in building a successful appraisal system:

1. Culture of the organization:

a. Culture is a major determinant of how relationships are conducted within an organization and how the business is run. It colors the feeling one gets inside an organization and is portrayed in the products and services delivered to clients.

b. The appraisal system must reflect the organization’s culture. An appraisal system that is out of synch with cultural norms also will lack meaning for employees, because it will be viewed as irrelevant to how things really get done.

c. Bringing appraisal practices into agreement with culture requires a critical analysis of the elements of culture that impact appraisal – these include the way employees are rewarded and advanced through the organization, the structure and exercise of power, the flow and directions of feedback and other communications, the way in which work is planned and directed, the value placed upon human resources compared to other resources and the influence of the supervisor in controlling the employee’s destiny.

2. The purposes that management has for performance appraisal:

a. The purposes ascribed to performance appraisal system have become more numerous and complicated as human resource functions have become more complex and differentiated.

b. The more tasks the appraisal system assumes, the more judgment, talent, time, and pages are demanded of managers, and the less focused they become on the primary activity of planning and evaluating performance. Sometimes the objectives of an appraisal system contradict one another.

c. The task is to keep the purposes of a performance appraisal system somewhat limited and compatible. A system that concentrates on just a few, noncontradictory objectives

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