Developing Performance Appraisal Processes - Essay Example

?Performance Appraisal A. Summary The senior management team needs to conduct performance appraisal based on its actual company standard that is widely understood by its employees. This is to ensure that the whole system of performance appraisal is to be viewed fair and just by its employees. The managers must be able to have a better view of the real and actual performance of their subordinates or employees. There must always be a good reason for every employee to believe that what their managers perceived about their performance has something to do with their own abilities, strengths, skills and acquired knowledge in their jobs. The senior management should as much as possible prevent unsatisfied employees after the performance appraisal process. There should be a good way to determine the best way how to let employees understand what the company exactly perceives about their actual performance. There should be correct and exact criteria for performance appraisal that are not susceptible to bias or one-sided in its approach when they are put into application. This is to ensure that the entire process of performance appraisal program is controlled by the management that is far beyond the issue of unfair treatment. Management should give skills empowerment program for its employees. This is one of the ways in which employees are set to another level of standard and this is also a way how the management expects them to achieve specific level or standard. Learning and growth strategy is another important goal of the management to be executed prior to the actual performance appraisal process. This is to ensure that employees are given the exact idea that the management expects them to grow and thus performance appraisal is just one of the effective ways for such measurement. In this way, employees will not recent about how they are being evaluated considering that there is a significant basis why they should be evaluated. In fact, the management could express its learning and growth strategy as a way of investing in its human resource. The management should emphasised that investing in its employees and particularly in its human resource is a good start to emphasise the significance of performance appraisal. However, employees should not view this as only a way of maximising company’s profit or financial performance. Rather, it should be viewed as integral part of how an organisation should find for its corporate success. This should be widely understood by employees and that their performance is an integral part of the entire corporate performance in the achievement of goals. Finally, the management should create a good working environment for its employees. In this way, there is always a good reason for its employees to believe that they are giving their time at the right place. This should be integrated in the performance appraisal system. This is one of the good ways to ensure corresponding success in any attempt to evaluate corporate performance as far as the human resource is concerned. B. Recommendations Success of new performance appraisal process should be evaluated based on the detailed concept of employee-employer relationships. There are many things that an employer should understand about employees because each one of them has specific needs that could motivate them at some point. Feedbacks should be given in a way that it promotes neutral impact on both the management and its employees. This is to ensure that the employees are able to grasp the genuine intention of the management for giving feedbacks. Employer must be able to create significant understanding about both external and internal factors of the business environment. In this reason, there is always a good chance to take a better look at how employees perform their tasks and manage to do them based on the firm’s expectations. Firm should be able to evaluate first its expectations. In this way, there is always a good chance to concentrate on what really benefits the organisation. However, this does not mean that the entire process should be solely for the benefit of the organisation. The bottom line is to eliminate potential barriers between performance appraiser and employees. The employer must be able to identify the potential hazards of performance evaluation. This is to say that the management must be able to realise that there is a need to create special tasks for predicting the impacts of performance appraisal on the employees. This is another way of ensuring that the entire performance evaluation process is not centered on the company’s corporate goals but it must ensure a two-way communication process which includes the capacity of employees to express how they feel about being evaluated. Raters need to also evaluate their capacity to perform performance appraisal activity. In this way, there is a need to understand how exactly they associate important and specific criteria in their performance evaluation system with the actual performance appraisal process. There is always a good point to understand what exactly motivates employees. It is in this way that it would be easy to pinpoint the most effective evaluation system focusing on what exactly the immediate response a company needs to know from its employees. Company should eliminate the gaps that may occur between the management and its employees during the appraisal process. Performance appraisal process needs to be enjoyed, not hated through giving what exactly would motivate and create positive impact among employees. Fair and just appraisal criteria should be instituted. This has to be made known and its objective process should be a significant way to express how employees feel about their job. At some point, there is a good reason to allow employees to evaluate their own performance and let them explain why they feel that way about how they perform. The next point would be to give the management’s own evaluation and ensure that the employees agree to it. In this way, the employee will not feel bad about his or her performance at all knowing that there is always a room for the management for a two-way communication process in the performance appraisal process. C. Rationale of the recommendations Performance appraisal defined ‘After last performance appraisals, I just ended up thinking that I should leave. The manager had no idea about how good I was at my job – I thought that the criteria that were used to assess me were all wrong. There was no discussing about how I might improve my skills, get more training, or be promoted. It just made me think I was wasting my time being here.’ – Unsatisfied employee The above statement of an unsatisfied employee is an indication that performance appraisal triggers reaction. An organisation may want to improve its operation and sustain growth and development of the firm by performance appraisal, but rating accuracy remains an important concern within the context of evaluating an employee’s work performance (Wang, 2010). This is part of the performance management system in the organisation, but even performance appraisal has become an integral part of it, it still remains a wide subject area that remains misunderstood at some point (Doleh and Weir, 2007). Performance appraisal is commonly viewed as a way to increase salary and secure promotions, but in general it is part of administrative decisions which primarily involves feedbacks of employee’s performance (Lam et al., 2002). Performance may vary from time to time due to external and internal factors in the working environment (Fox et al., 2005). It is in this reason that there is a wide concern place on this issue considering that performance of employees is tantamount to the success of the firm. It is said that performance appraisal is essential to individual and organisational performance. At some point, this sounds too good to be true. Feedbacks are proven not to be beneficial at all times because not all receivers respond to them positively (Kamer and Annen, 2010). Some studies point out that every event that happens to an employee daily has corresponding impacts on mood and which eventually will be experienced the following day and so on until it will entirely affect well being (Grawitch et al., 2008). Thus, it is important to understand this in order to find out how open an individual to criticism and work feedbacks on a day to day basis. This therefore implies that giving of feedbacks may not necessary bring good results to an organisation because the entire process depends on the level of an individual’s understanding about the point of assessing their performance. Performance is usually measured through quantitative information, but the process of conveying it to someone else becomes narrative at some point (Brutus, 2010). Performance may sound subjective in a way and what makes it objective is the ability of the rater to use criteria and transform information quantitatively through them. This is the reason why it is hard to convey feedbacks because the information conveyed needs to be communicated but such does not ensure total achievement of the rater’s purpose. In fact, there is a noted gap between the performance appraiser and employees (Hui and Qin-xuan, 2009). This simply indicates the reason why there are many supervisors or subordinates hate about performance appraisal exercises (Yam and Kluger, 2011). Kamer and Annen positively point out that the core self-evaluations are associated with predicting performance appraisal reactions among employees. However, Kline and Sulsky (2009) emphasised that there is a need to also improve the skills of the rater through training. This is done through enhancing the capacity of the rater to detect error in the appraisal, improving the capacity to observe behaviour, and through frame-of-reference training. MacDonald and Sulsky (2009) agreed to this by ephasising that rater formats and rating trainings are necessary in order to get the right feedback and rater development process by eliminating probable rater bias in the assessment. Raters may have self-interest that may be integrated within the assessment and MacDonald and Sulksy strongly emphasised that it is important that this must be eliminated or neutralised. Organisational culture, legal climate, trust, rater training, and appraisal documentation are some of the social factors that are said to affect performance appraisal (Kline and Sulsky, 2009). A rater’s motives behind performance appraisal may be socially defined based on these factors. The meaning of performance may be broad that is why it needs to be clearly defined based on selected criteria. There are significant and specific parameters that should be included in the performance appraisal. These include performance dimension, performance expectations associated with alternative performance levels, evaluation of situational constraints in the midst of evaluating performance, performance level for each performance dimension, and the extent of using absolute and relative standards (Kline and Sulsky, 2009). These are all important parameters that need to be used in order to create specific level of understanding performance evaluation not only from the point of view of the rater, but especially from the point of view of the employees. However, in performance appraisal, the meaning of measurement is sometimes given with so much focused rather than the meaning of performance itself (Sulsky and Keown). Measurement of team performance and its usage are two essential issues about team performance appraisal (Kline and Sulsky, 2009). Rating employees generally fall into two major formats. Employee’s performance may be appraised based on their actual behavior in their specific work and on traits such as leadership skills, creativity and others (Kline and Sulsky, 2009). The significance of feedbacks However, at some point feedbacks are necessary. Study shows that those employees who are constantly exposed to them are motivated and fulfilled in their jobs compared to those who are not (Grawitch, 2008). However, Grawitch and company believed that employees are not only looking for feedbacks but for autonomy, skill, variety, task identification and significance. This means for instance that an employee needs to be clearly exposed to certain things that the management clearly expects from them to perform well. For instance, if the management wants them to be efficient at certain task, then it is necessary that they have to be exposed to further learning and growth program to develop their skills and knowledge of their job. In this way, employees will be able to completely understand the point of the management in conducting evaluative programs. On the other hand, based on the above findings, it will also be a good strategy if the management will be able to identify clearly the tasks that a certain employee should be performing. This gives motivation because at certain level, employees will be guided on what to do and clearly will be able to understand more about the specific tasks they are expected to function well. What Grawitch and company tried to emphasise in their study is the point that task appraisals are necessary and they try to ignite anticipated support, effort and self monitoring of performance. Thus, there is a good way to believe that task performance, helping, voice, and organisational loyalty have significant impact on the performance appraisal (Whiting et al., 2008). Workplace intervention Workplace intervention is therefore a critical stage between employers and employees. There must be a correct understanding between the management and its employees because in reality, it is clearly stated that the latter have important expectations in the same way that the former expect positive result. However, there are some instances or cases that workplace intervention may not be well exercised. For example, in Germany, the hierarchical functions of an employee affect the assessment process. Employees with higher or lower responsibilities are assessed less often, but in general larger companies often conducted assessment or evaluation among their employees (Grund and Sliwka, 2009). This only implies that the middle level employees are constantly exposed to assessment such as performance appraisal. Furthermore, Grund and Sliwka added that the performance of older employees and women are less assessed. The implication of this practice is putting too much pressure on the performance of young, male and at the bottom-level management personnel. In this regard, these people should be exposed to diverse training because the management expects more from them. However, from the point of view of Grawitch and colleagues, these people must be fully supported with diverse supports through more training enhancement, job description definition and other important approach in order for them to understand clearly what they are expected to do. In this case, they are effectively informed about their real responsibilities. This will basically give effective result of the performance appraisal as believed by Kline and Sulksy. The impact of motivation The idea of motivation is very important. Employees have to be motivated to work and it is clear that performance appraisal does not totally guarantee total support among employees due to some essential issues. Employees certainly have specific needs and these are all covered in the basic understanding of motivation. It is important to understand that employees who are not motivated in their respective tasks are most likely not after of performance appraisal. However, in the same way, performance appraisal is also a way of finding what exactly motivates an employee. Thus, in the first place, an employer must be able to understand the essential concepts about motivation. Motivation theories have five general categories and these primarily include need-based, cognitive process, behavioral approach, self-determination and job based (Phillips and Tush, 2008). The need-based theories discuss about work motivation in relation with employee’s satisfaction of their needs in the workplace. Based on these theories, an organization has to understand their employees on the basis of their needs. The management should create or implement activities and they involve primarily the gathering of feedbacks from employees as far as uncovering their needs is concerned. Not only that, it is also important to understand external feedbacks in order to have some basis on how to enhance staffs’ productivity or efficiency. As stated earlier, these are all in line with the rater’s enhancement of their rating skills. In order to effectively do this, the management or the rater must not only after of improving or enhancing personnel performance, but prior to any performance appraisal, it is stated earlier that there is a need for the management to improve its rating skills. Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of one’s need states that the general types of needs which include physiological, survival, safety, love and esteem have to be satisfied from the very basic up to the highest level. This means that the bottom needs should be first satisfied before the other needs are fully experienced. Thus, physiological needs should be first survival needs are satisfied, physiological needs must first be fulfilled. Aside from the need-based approach in fulfilling needs, the cognitive process theories are very important to be taught because of its ability to gauge the level of intensity of staff’s performance evaluation. As stated earlier, the management from time to time needs to exactly know the level of their staffs’ productivity and the level of their efforts exerted. For instance, even though there are different departments in an organisation, in a firm where performance appraisal is necessary, each employee has the chance to be evaluated. As stated earlier, large companies in Germany are most likely to conduct employee assessment. These companies therefore need to understand cognitive process in order to understand employee motivation. The behavioral approach includes the application of principles of learning to the work environment. Since every day life is a matter of experience, then learning has become an essential part of daily activities. In understanding these theories, managers are guided in understanding their staff productivity and how it develops over time as they are continuously expose to different experiences. The working environment therefore must be conducive for learning and growth activities. Another theories associated with motivation is self-determination which primarily talks about the extrinsic and intrinsic factors such as approval, money, work interest and more. Staffs have different needs and managers must be able to know how to address and evaluate them effectively through incentives, rewards or appreciations. The intrinsic and extrinsic values depend on an individual’s perception of things. This is based on the idea that everyone has different approach in understanding information around especially in receiving feedbacks. There is a strong emphasis placed on job-based theories of motivation. Based on these theories, those who have been gaining satisfaction with their jobs are most like to perform them better due to a significantly higher level of motivation. Mangers are therefore guided by this principle to evaluate their staffs based on their general motivation in doing their jobs. References Brutus, S. (2010) ‘Words versus numbers: A theoretical exploration of giving and receiving narrative comments in performance appraisal. Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 20 (2): 144-157. Doleh, J. A., and Weir, D. (2007) ‘Dimensions of performance appraisal systems in Jordanian private and public organizations.’ International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 18 (1): 75-84. Fox, S., Bizman, A., and Garti, A. (2005) ‘Is Distributional Appraisal More Effective than the Traditional Performance Appraisal Method?’ European Journal of Psychological Assessment, Vol. 21 (3): 165-172. Grawitch, M. J., Granda, S. E., and Barber, L. K. 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