Performance appraisal deals with how organizations evaluate and measures its employees achievements and behaviors. It is an employee review by his manager where his work performance is evaluated and strengths and weaknesses are identified so that the employee knows his improvement areas. Performance appraisal is the right time to set new goals and objectives for the employees.
Before we look into the types of Performance appraisal system, let us check out the purpose of it.
So what is the purpose of a performance appraisal system?
Performance appraisal system allows the management categorize employees into performers and non-performers. It is primarily done to estimate the employees’ worth.
Going back to the types, there are different variations of performance appraisal systems. Let us list them down and see a bit of what they are:
- Behavioral checklist: Behavioral checklist has a list of criteria that an employee should workup to be a diligent worker. The behaviors differ according to the type of job been assessed. This method is considered favorable as the evaluation is done on the basis of individual employee performance without comparisons.
- 360 degree appraisal: 360 degree appraisal involves feedback of the manager, supervisor, team members and any direct reports. In this method of appraisal, employees complete profile has to be collected and assessed. In addition to evaluating the employees work performance and technical skill set, an appraiser collects an in-depth feedback of the employee.
- Management by objective: This is an objective type of evaluation which falls under modern approach of performance appraisal. In MBO method of performance appraisal, manager and the employee agree upon specific and obtainable goals with a set deadline. With this method, the appraiser can define success and failure easily.
- Psychological appraisals: This appraisal method evaluates the employees intellect, emotional stability, analytical skills and other psychological traits. This method makes it easy for the manager in placing the employees in appropriate teams.
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I read this article with interest and felt it was worth commenting as I am not sure that I support the assertion that the purpose is primarily about evaluating an employee's worth. I can entirely see why it would be viewed with cynicism if that is seen to be the purpose.
My view is that a performance appraisal should be about motivating and empowering an employee to deliver their maximum. It should be a culmination of a series of meaningful performance discussions over the course of the year and acts as a punctuation point, where previous performance is evaluated and future performance objectives are agreed. This is not about somebody's 'worth' personally or financially but about their performance to date and future potential.
I appreciate it may be semantics as the language of this article reads a little strangely, however I think it s misleading to put the term Psychological appraisal in this list. Perhaps the author is talking about personality and behavioural evaluation tools which could give indication of people's behavioural preferences but this is not the same as assessment. In fact using something like this to evaluate performance could be viewed quite negatively in the eyes of Employment Law.
Please feel free to disagree with me, it is good to promote debate I guess!
Thanks (0)Good article...and good points made by Lucy too.
Personally, I think that appraisals and associated feedback should also kept constructive and mapped back to the individuals job role and the strategic objectives of the company.
Activities can then be planned to identify the performance element under discussion and show ways of improving it going forward.
We recently published a piece of recent on high-performing training organisations, which maps the key characteristics that many of them share. You can download it here if it is of interest; http://goo.gl/Usg0SJ
I do tend to agree with Lucy however that the term psychological appraisal does echo back to some form of archaic performance appraisal - hopefully we have moved on from those practices now.
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