Performance Appraisal

Performance Appraisal

Performance Appraisal

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Performance appraisal is the effort to determine, in a certain framework of job and mission description, the individual's level to realize this job and mission. It is the measurement of the employee's level of realizing determined missions in a given amount of time.

Performance appraisal is a very important function of human resources management. It consists of studies on measuring the individual's level of efficiency and success in any given subject. To measure the level of efficiency and success is very complex task, because it involves evaluating an individual. Another challenge is that the concepts of performance and success are subjective.

Performance appraisal is observing individual's work, efficiencies, deficiencies, surpluses and inefficiencies with every aspect.

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL METHODS

A) RATING SCALES

It is the most common and basic method of performance appraisal. The rating scale is used for ranking the employees according to various functions by evaluators. The most appropriate situations to use that scale are organizations where the performance of employees is needed to be evaluated according to quantity of output. With this scale, for example, the performance of an employee working on the assembly line can be demonstrated certainly.

Aside from being basic, another benefit of this method is that it provides the management to see the performance of the employees immediately. In this method, the employees are evaluated according to some factors about work. Some of them are:

Quantity of work

Quality of work

Attention to work

Knowledge of work

Ability to make decisions

The evaluation forms are divided into categories according to these factors, and the evaluator marks the evaluation for every category on the form. Generally evaluations are proceeded in 4 steps. These methods can be grouped as follows:

alphabetical scaling

numerical scaling

explanatory scaling

basic scaling

The researches show that this method is the most commonly used method with 57%.

A mark is assigned for every category of evaluation. Thereby a summary of this employee's performance is complied. The manager marks the most appropriate degree for the evaluated employee in every category. Rating scale is applied in two ways as continuous and non-continuous scales.

The possible problems of this method are:

It doesn't provide constructive criticism.

It generally isn't based on a conceptual basis that is apart from the evaluator's judgements.

It is volatile to circle effects.

Some terms in the evaluation form (because it is prepared for the whole organization) may not be related to some people in the organization.

- It invokes the feeling of 'finishing the work as soon as possible' instead of evaluating the employees in depth and encouraging them.

The rating scale method requires the managers to have more preparation before evaluation, because it is detailed and advanced. It reflects the performance of employees if prepared carefully. There are descriptions special for every subject in rating scale. The manager bases the evaluation of the employees on these descriptions when marking them from 'excellent' to 'very low'. The basic mission and responsibilities are listed and the categories of marks are shown.

Rating scale is an appropriate tool in situations where the performance of the employees is going to be measured quantitatively, ...