ARTICLE 3. FUNCTIONS OF HRD 2.PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

 

INTRODUCTION 

Human asset surpasses in value and in importance than other physical assets in an organization. It is the human tendency to love appreciation and every one loves to be appreciated. Primarily Performance appraisal ensure your work force 's alignment with your company's strategic goals. such systems comprises with methodologies and techniques that measures and develop employee performance. Performance appraisal is an effective tool for continues monitoring and improving development plans. HR professionals required to understand their system's capabilities and using them for development. hence employee performance evaluation can be treated as a very important HRD function. 

WHAT IS PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Schuler and Youngblood(1986) define performance appraisal as a system of measuring, evaluating and influencing an employees job related attributes, behaviors and outcome and  to discover level of performance on the job. 

Opatha H (2016) defined EPE as the "systematic process of identifying, measuring, influencing and developing job performance of the employees in the organization in relation to the set norms and standards for a particular period of time in order to achieve various  purposes."

below depicted are the purposes  of  Performance  Evaluation.

1.    Administrative purposes:

PE provides a set of information for the management of employees and make decision accordingly.

a.    Human power planning -  to estimate HR supply through develop skill  inventories.

b.   Reward management -    to decide on increme.nt of wages, incentives etc

c.    Management of promotions -     to identify and measure the degree of merit of employees.

d.    Administration of transfers -     to identify the capabilities and allocate job role accordingly.

e.    Discipline administration -   when determining severity of disciplinary action  PE information is                                                         useful

f.     Selection  -    when selecting applicants to fill job vacancies or any other career opportunity

g.    Hiring -    when deciding to hire a temporary/ casual employee into the permanent staff. 

h.     Management of Labour - Management relationship.

2.    Development Purposes:

PE is useful in following ways for management development.

a.    Training -    To identify the needs of employee where there is a lack of performance and need to be                             improved.

b.    Guiding and directing subordinates. - The  superior will be able to give specific and relevant feedback to the staff individually

c.     Better productivity -    It  increases  the mutual understanding between leader and the subordinate and favorable their relationship.

3.     Informative purposes:

a.       It can be very powerful tool for showing employees what is valued and what is incidental (Baron and Kreps1999, cited by Opatha H 2016)

b.   Employee knows what aspects to be improved to become excellent.

c.    way of helping employee to get prepared for future promotions and opportunities

d.    PE recognize the employees for their excellent performances.

e.    PE will enable employee  to develop the role clarity which leads to do right things.

PROCESS OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

METHODS OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Rating Scale

This method has identified as oldest and mostly used evaluation method. This method is easier to understand and administer, and also applicable to a large number of employees. Under this method a form comprises with evaluation criteria to be provided to the evaluator and the evaluator supposed to provide a subjective evaluation of subordinate in a scale from very poor to exceptional.

Checklist Method

Evaluator will be given a form, which consist of a list of statements representing the characteristics and performance of the  employee. Evaluator has to select statements applicable to the employee. Each statement assigned with a weightage according to the significance of the statement which is unknown to the evaluator. The weights allow the rating to be quantified so that that total scores can be determined (Whether and Davis, 1989) 

Forced Choice Method

This method quiet similar to checklist method. It provides 4-5 statements under each performance evaluation criteria and evaluator has to select most applicable statement with regard to the employee. A marking scheme is provided according to relative significance of the statement. 

Behaviorally anchored rating scale (BARS)

this method more focused on behaviors  and activities of employee rather than traits and results. it is a tool for evaluating employees in a defined set of performance dimensions by comparing their behaviour with specific behavioral examples that anchor each performance level. this method attempt to reduce subjectivity in evaluation and to minimize weaknesses related to subjective evaluation criteria. the BARS already contains behaviour that the superior can use in developing the appraisal counselling interview (Donnelly et al, 1984)

Performance Test and Observations

This is a method use by large scale organizations. By providing question papers on respective fields of job and then assessing the answers received. Through this method criteria such as theoretical knowledge, intelligence  can be evaluated well. But commitment to the job does not reflect.

Confidential Reports

The evaluator writes a confidential report about each employee's strengths and weaknesses and adds suggestions for improvement. this method mainly focusses on behaviour.

Essay Method

The evaluator requires to write an essay of the subordinate outlining key areas of job performance, such as quality of work, cooperation etc. A built in weakness in essay approach is that the evaluators have unequal skills in writing (Dubrain, 1981). 

Paired Comparison Method

Under this method the manager must compare every employee with every other employee within the department or work group. overall performance of the employee can be considered for the evaluation. this method allows for highly accurate comparison and results are more precise than a simple ranking method(Dubrin,1981)

Ranking method

The evaluator is required to rate employees from the best to worst on some given criteria. this method has proven valuable in personnel selection and in generating order of merit rankings for salary administration purposes (Chruden and Sherman,1980).

Management By Objectives (MBO)

This method deals with determining objectives to be accomplished by the employee within a certain period of time and assessing the degree of success in achieving those objectives. MBO focuses on results and does not focus on traits and behaviours of the employee. MBO is an applied management technique that not only stresses the importance of mutual understanding between a superior and a subordinate , but is concerned with initiating and stimulating better performance through a proactive as opposed to a reactive  style of managing (Szilagyi,1981)

360- Degree Method

An employee is evaluated by his/her supervisor, manager, peers, colleagues, subordinates and even management and clients. It give a more complete picture of employees performance towards different levels of stakeholders.

Forced Distribution Method

Under this method the evaluator is required to sort employees into different classifications on a curve. This method assumes that degree of performances are normally distributed statistically among employees being concerned. This may not always be true. 

Performance Evaluation Discussion

once the performance appraisal is done, results of the evaluation should be discussed with the employee by the evaluator or evaluation committee. Regardless of the method adopted the results should be communicated to the employee to have a clear understanding of hoe they stand in the perception of evaluator. Evaluator must give proper justification on ratings made and should discuss the ways of improvement. Also it helps for the development aspects  as well. Generally this is done through an interview. There are four types of interviews called;

•            Tel-and-Sell  - Evaluator tells the degree to which employee has performed and sells steps for improvement
•            Tell and Listen - Provide employee a chance to explain reasons, excuses and defense on performance ratings given by the evaluator.
•            Problem Solving - This  involves a participative and have open  dialog between evaluator and employee to solve special problems experienced by the employee.
•            Mixed - Combination of Tel and sell  with problem solving or tell and listen with problem solving types.

CONCLUSION

Performance appraisal models are becoming more complex to accommodate nuanced business needs. Over the next few years, there is likely to be a general transition away from annual, single-rater reviews to project-based reviews and compensation; greater empathy in performance ratings; and an increased focus on measuring team performance. Regular focus on performance management with frequent engagement can increase productivity compared to the annual appraisal method. It is possible to achieve three types of purposes, i.e., administrative purposes, development purposes and informative purposes through PE. PE is not only a HRM function but also a general management function.

References

Ajantha S Dharmasiri (2015) HRM FOR MANAGERS

Dr. Henarath HDNP Opatha, (2016) Human Resource Management

Michael Armstrong (2012) Armstrong's handbook of Human Resource Management 12th edition

https://www.kenjo.io/guide-performance-appraisals-for-human-resources