Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal is the process of obtaining, analyzing and recording information about the relative worth of
an employee. The focus of the performance appraisal is measuring and improving the actual performance of the
employee and also the future potential of the employee. Its aim is to measure what an employee does.

According to Flippo, a prominent personality in the field of Human resources, "performance appraisal is the
systematic, periodic and an impartial rating of an employee’s excellence in the matters pertaining to his present
job and his potential for a better job." Performance appraisal is a systematic way of reviewing and assessing the
performance of an employee during a given period of time and planning for his future.

It is a powerful tool to calibrate, refine and reward the performance of the employee. It helps to analyze his
achievements and evaluate his contribution towards the achievements of the overall organizational goals.

By focusing the attention on performance, performance appraisal goes to the heart of personnel management
and reflects the management's interest in the progress of the employees.

Purpose of performance appraisal

Why you do performance appraisal? Purposes of performance appraisal include elements as follows:
1. Career Development
• This provides an opportunity for discussion of career objectives, and creation of a strategy designed to maximize
career potential.
• To provide an opportunity for career counselling
• To help in succession planning.
• To assess training needs
• To plan for career development
• To assess and develop individual abilities
• To provide an objective basis on which to base decisions about training and promotion
2. Feedback
• As well, feedback is encouraged in both directions: as such, employees are encouraged to prepare ratings of their
supervisors.
• To provide constructive feedback to the individual regarding how their performance is seen.
• This provides a structured format for the discussion of performance issues on a regular basis.
• Feedback either reinforces performance strengths, or provides the opportunity to discuss resolution of
performance deficiencies.
3. Administrative Uses of Performance appraisal
• Salary
• Promotion
• Retention/termination
• Recognition of performance
• Layoffs
• Identification of poor performers
4. Performance History
• This provides a performance history which is not dependent upon human memory, and which may be useful in
the full range of personnel decisions, including compensation decision-making.
• To review past and present performance, identifying strengths and weaknesses.
5. Organizational Goals
• To clarify, for the individual, organizational expectations
To set objectives for the next period
• This provides an opportunity to view one’s performance in the context of broader organizational goals.
• To assess future promotion prospects and potential
6. Job Standards
This provides an opportunity for clearer articulation and definition of performance expectations.
7. Documentation use of Performance appraisal
• Documentation for HR decisions
• Helping to meet legal requirements
PROBLEMS IN PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL
1. Problems with leniency and strictness:
• The leniency bias crops when some raters have a tendency to be liberal in their rating by assigning higher rates
consistently.
• Equally damaging one is assigning consistently low rates.
2. Problems with central tendency:
• Some raters appraise all the employees around the middle point of the rating scale and they avoid rating the
people higher or lower level.
• They follow play safe policy because of answer ability to management or lack of knowledge about the job and
person he is rating or least interest in his job.
3. Problems with personal prejudice:
If the rater dislikes any employee, he may rate them at the lower end and this may distort the rating purpose and
affect the career of these employees.
4. Problems with halo effect:
• A person outstanding in one area tends to receive outstanding or better than average ratings in other areas as
well, even when such a rating is undeserved
• To minimizing the halo effect, you should appraise all the employees by one trait before going to rate on the
basis of another trait.
5. Problems with recent performance effect:
In general, raters remember the recent appraisal of the employee and they usually follow appraisal results last
time.
Pre-requisites for Effective & Successful Performance Appraisal

The essentials of an effective performance system are as follows:

 Documentation – means continuous noting and documenting the performance. It also helps the evaluators to
give a proof and the basis of their ratings.
 Standards / Goals – the standards set should be clear, easy to understand, achievable, motivating, time
bound and measurable.
 Practical and simple format - The appraisal format should be simple, clear, fair and objective. Long and
complicated formats are time consuming, difficult to understand, and do not elicit much useful information.

Evaluation technique – An appropriate evaluation technique should be selected; the appraisal system should be
performance based and uniform. The criteria for evaluation should be based on observable and measurable
characteristics of the behaviour of the employee.

 Communication – Communication is an indispensable part of the Performance appraisal process. The desired
behaviour or the expected results should be communicated to the employees as well as the evaluators.
Communication also plays an important role in the review or feedback meeting. Open communication system
motivates the employees to actively participate in the appraisal process.

 Feedback – The purpose of the feedback should be developmental rather than judgmental. To maintain its
utility, timely feedback should be provided to the employees and the manner of giving feedback should be such
that it should have a motivating effect on the employees’ future performance.

 Personal Bias – Interpersonal relationships can influence the evaluation and the decisions in the performance
appraisal process. Therefore, the evaluators should be trained to carry out the processes of appraisals without
personal bias and effectively.

Approaches to Performance Development

Traditional approach
Performance appraisal has been used as just a method for determining and justifying the salaries of the
employees. Than it began to be used a tool for determining rewards (a rise in the pay) and punishments (a cut in
the pay) for the past performance of the employees.
This approach was a past oriented approach which focused only on the past performance of the employees i.e.
during a past specified period of time.

Modern approach

The modern approach to performance development has made the performance appraisal process more formal
and structured. Now, the performance appraisal is taken as a tool to identify better performing employees
from others, employees’ training needs, career development paths, rewards and bonuses and their
promotions to the next levels.

Appraisals have become a continuous and periodic activity in the organizations. The results of performance
appraisals are used to take various other HR decisions like promotions, demotions, transfers, training and
development, reward outcomes. The modern approach to performance appraisals includes a feedback process
that helps to strengthen the relationships between superiors and subordinates and improve communication
throughout the organization.

The modern approach to Performance appraisal is a future oriented approach and is developmental in nature.
This recognizes employees as individuals and focuses on their development.

Performance appraisal methods

1. Critical incident method
The critical incidents for performance appraisal is a method in which the manager writes down positive and
negative performance behaviour of employees throughout the performance period
2. Weighted checklist
This method describe a performance appraisal method where rater familiar with the jobs being evaluated prepared
a large list of descriptive statements about effective and ineffective behaviour on jobs
3. Paired comparison analysis
Paired comparison analysis is a good way of weighing up the relative importance of options.
A range of plausible options is listed. Each option is compared against each of the other options. The results are
tallied and the option with the highest score is the preferred option.
4. Graphic rating scales
The Rating Scale is a form on which the manager simply checks off the employee’s level of performance.
This is the oldest and most widely method used for performance appraisal.
5. Essay Evaluation
This method asked managers / supervisors to describe strengths and weaknesses of an employee’s behaviour.
Essay evaluation is a non-quantitative technique. This method is usually used with the graphic rating scale method.
6. Behaviourally anchored rating scales
This method used to describe a performance rating that focused on specific behaviours or sets as indicators of
effective or ineffective performance.
It is a combination of the rating scale and critical incident techniques of employee performance evaluation.
7. Performance ranking method
Ranking is a performance appraisal method that is used to evaluate employee performance from best to worst.
Manager will compare an employee to another employee, rather than comparing each one to a standard
measurement.
8. Management by Objectives (MBO)
MBO is a process in which managers / employees set objectives for the employee, periodically evaluate the
performance, and reward according to the result.
MBO focuses attention on what must be accomplished (goals) rather than how it is to be accomplished (methods)
9. 360 degree performance appraisal
360 Degree Feedback is a system or process in which employees receive confidential, anonymous feedback from
the people who work around them.
10. Forced ranking (forced distribution)
Forced ranking is a method of performance appraisal to rank employee but in order of forced distribution.
For example, the distribution requested with 10 or 20 percent in the top category, 70 or 80 percent in
the middle, and 10 percent in the bottom11. Behavioural Observation Scales
11. Behaviour observation
Behavioural Observation Scales is frequency rating of critical incidents that worker has performed.
Job analysis

A job analysis is the process used to collect information about the duties, responsibilities, necessary skills,
outcomes, and work environment of a particular job. One needs as much data as possible to put together a job
description, which is the frequent outcome of the job analysis. Additional outcomes include recruiting plans,
position postings and advertisements, and performance development planning within the performance
management system.

Job analysis for lecturers :

• After going for a literature review and web browsing, I came to know that certain factors are critical to the job of
a management lecturer. For being further specific I used the survey method with certain people working in the
educational industry and following was the result:
• The norms for selection and promotions are decided by UGC (University Grant commission) and AICTE (all India
council for technical education)
• All the colleges and universities have to follow these policies compulsorily
• Out of 7 different responsibilities taken over here, preparing and delivering lectures, conducting research in the
particular field of knowledge, guiding faculties and students for research are highly prioritized. Which may be
seen from the table and graph too.
Table1. Priority of functions and responsibilities

functional priority rank 1 rank2 rank3 rank4 rank5 rank6 rank7 weightage
preparing and delivering lectures 7 2 1 0 2 1 1 25
examining student 1 1 0 2 2 1 7 10
administering the class 0 2 1 4 2 2 3 15
conducting research in particular field of
knowledge 1 4 2 4 1 1 1 15
guiding other faculties and students in research 1 0 6 1 0 4 2 10
student counseling in academic and vocational
curricula 1 3 1 2 4 3 0 15
organizing and motivating students to perform in
co curriculum activities 2 2 3 1 3 2 1 10
100

Graph1. Priority of functions and responsibilities

The level of criticality and complexity of a job is also a major aspect for job assessment, which may be done by
level of competencies required for a certain job. These were the level of competencies required for job of a
lecturer.

Table2. Level of competencies required

weightag
1st level 2nd level 3rd level 4th level 5th level e

preparing and delivering lectures 0 2 3 2 7 17

examining student 0 3 2 4 5 17

administering the class 1 0 3 8 2 10

conducting research in particular field of knowledge 0 0 2 3 9 17

guiding other faculties and students in research 0 0 6 4 4 10

student counseling in academic and vocational
curricula 0 0 2 8 4 12
organizing and motivating students to perform in co
curriculum activities 0 1 4 2 7 17
100
Graph2. Level of competencies required
To minimize the biasness I weighted the scores according to the results and the two weighted scores were multiplied by each
other. The output came as following:

Over all
Weightage for Weightage for weightag
Functional priority priority efficiency e
Preparing and delivering lectures 0.25 0.17 42.5
Examining student 0.1 0.17 17
Administering the class 0.15 0.1 15
Conducting research in particular field of knowledge 0.15 0.17 25.5
Guiding other faculties and students in research 0.1 0.1 10
Student counselling in academic and vocational curricula 0.15 0.12 18
Organizing and motivating students to perform in co
curriculum activities 0.1 0.17 17
1 1
Total=14
5

On the scale of 145 points, 42.5 points are devoted to preparing and delivering lectures and 25.5 points weight for
conducting research. Other leading factors are student counselling in academic, vocational and cultural curriculum.
This shows that day to day updation of knowledge and research work for deep conceptual understanding which has
been kept as the main factors of selection of a lecturer are the real parameters to do the job analysis of a
management lecturer.

Critical aspect Rank on scale of 5 where 1 is lowest and 5 is highest

I. Preparing and 1 2 3 4 5
delivering
lectures

1. Course content

2. Concept clarity

3. Practical
examples

4. Case study/role
play

5. Use of different
tools

6. Class
participation
7. Lectures taken
against planned
lectures

8. Course coverage

Total /40

I. Conducting Points where 0 is minimum and 6 is maximum.

research and
guiding others
for research

1. One point for

each paper
published

2. One point for

each paper
presented

3. Three point for

each book
written

4. one point for

guidance of each
published
 research

5. Two point for

each chapter
written in some
book

Total /30

I. Continual Points where o is lowest .

learning and
students
academic
counselling

1. One point for

each
Participation in
seminar or
workshop
(max. 9)

2. 1.5 points for

each seminar
or workshop
organized
(max. 9)
 3. One point for
every two
books read
(Max. 5)

Total
/20

I. Co curriculum Points where 0 being lowest .

activities

1. 3 points for each

activity
organized or
coordinated
(max. 9)

2. One point for

each time guided
students in co
curriculum
activity (max.
11)

Total /20

Grand total /110

Guide to use the tool

Poor and to be Desirable Eligible for incentives Eligible for promotion

counselled and incentives

55 points 65 points 75 and above 80 and above points

points for consecutive 3 years