Why Performance Appraisals Don´t Work?????

Hi,

I was just reading an article on Business Week Online June 28, 2005 edition, about Performance appraisals and came across this piece of article.

WHY PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS DON'T WORK?

Performance appraisals won´t work unless upper management takes interest. Senior management needs to be closely aligned with human resource executives on company goals, employee evaluation methods and the importance of performance appraisals. A company needs to view its appraisal system as a core component of the business.

Another reason that appraisals fail is because managers don´t know how to assess employees and don´t receive adequate training on how to carry out a productive review. An untrained evaluator may:

Have difficulty gauging work that doesn´t produce measurable results.

Give glowing appraisals based on one outstanding employee skill rather than on total performance (the halo effect).

Tend to stick to safer middle-ground evaluations, rather than using the full range of a performance rating scale.

Rate behavior rather than work performance. An employee who´s pleasant and always looks busy may cloud an appraiser´s perception.

Show bias toward employees that exhibit characteristics similar to their own.

Have difficulty accurately assessing the behavior of individuals by applying uniform standards of judgment.



It is told that if the PA does not work then it would do more harm than good. I surely agree with this. But there are some more points raised in my mind.

1. What is the HRs Role in PA? Is it only co-ordinating between the reviewer and the reviewee and setting up the meetings?

2. Where exactly does the HR pitch in to make it a fair deal?

3. Is it necessary that the HR also interact with the employee on his/her performance? If yes, then what do they talk?

4. What is the ideal way of recording or storing the info received from the PA?



It would be of a great help if anyone could clear my doubts. Also if you could refer me any books which gives a practical glimpse of the Performance Appraisal practises especially with in the IT field, or any site which would provide this info.

Regards,

Soumya Shankar

dear all,
the basic reason why P.A dnt work is that there are very few methods to track human performance....secondly P.A also getz affected by current performance i.e if u do well 2 mnths before your p.a u will hav a good appraisal, if you do badly durin dat time ur P.A wld be bad....managers need to understand this funda....to eliminate all biases... what say???
regards
vishal

Hi vishal,
I completely agree with you on that. I have come across this incident and unfortunately, inspite of being the HR i could not do anything.
Also, lack of knowledge for both the reviewer and the reviewee also affects the PA process, what do you say? I wanted to implement the 360 degrees here at my office, but without the proper understanding of it, it would do more harm, so i had to drop the idea.
Regards,
Soumya Shankar

hie Soumya,
P.A is a specialised tool, lack of knowledge on it does more harm than good....problem is functional people think they knw the best as thy have realtime experience....it is at this point when thy challenge the credibility of H.R...thou they dnt understand that they are a key to it....so thy shd respect it....what H.R does is more of consolidation....what say??
regards
vishal

Hi,
How can we calculate the productivity index of a company, as in how can we calculate the productivity of a company in total.

hi everyone
good articel
dint know about this
whatt can be done to improve?
communication??

One of the reasons that we faced is that we have got an online [company intranet] Performance Appraisal forms.
This are regularly filled up every quarter... But all you get is a generic hike in your pay...
Once you go and negotiate with the functional heads, the hike that a person as individual got was double his salary...
So what actually happened was that the performance appraisal showed an extraordinary performance, but the senior management didnot reacted correctly to it and did not give the hike in proportion to the appraisal result..
This makes the employee think that the performace appraisal is just a formality [to some extent it has become just a formality] in our company and the best way to get an hike is to negotiate with the functional head every now and then on the salary front.
Solution for this could only be one, that the senior management takes the evaluation, the result and the followup steps seriously and efficiently so that the appraisal system can really be implimented and accepted in the true spirit.

Hi,
I do agree with Ajmal that upon negotiating the hike might be raised. but that would be a total bias and the employees may not have the trust on the HR dept. also
In our co. we have the percentage of hike linked to the points scored. There is a min points that you need to score, beyond that every point counts. This would minimize the bias.
But however, cautious one may be there is loophole in every system and process. What do you say?
Regards,
Soumya Shankar

Like i said in the last post... There is no fault in the system... but the implementation of system is not done according to the norms....
There are lots of reasons to it.. some of them can be listed as below
1. The company does not want to give a hike in pay
2. The HR personnels are busy
3. The Employees have got no training in handling the appraisal system
4. The senior management is not confident about the appraisal results....
The list could be much longer, like an HR manager wants to keep the cost to the company of an employee low so he might not give raise to everybody and wait till somebody comes to negotiate...
That way he would be able to save some months pay hike.
Not a good idea but lots of HR people / Companies adopt it.

Hi Ajmal,
You are absolutely right. When we here at the forum keep discussing the right procedures, ethics; there is another part of the corporate world who does not believe in all these. For them they want to make money by hook or by crook.
My previous employer was one such you just mentioned. According to me there are two possibilities for change:
1. They understand that People is what makes an organisation and not Profits
2. There is a HR Revolution.
What do you say?
Regards,
Soumya Shankar