Performance Appraisals
Kimberly V. Adams
BUS303: Human Resources Management
Instructor Marissa Trejo
20 July 2015

Performance Appraisals
A performance appraisal is the evaluation of the performance of employees. Feedback is then provided and corrective action plans are designed (Youssef, 2012), or to understand the abilities of a person for further growth and development. There are several types and can be used in many ways. The purpose of this paper will focus on the performance evaluation in relation to its effectiveness on increasing employee performance and detail some advantages, biases, and contribution to the overall strategic objective.
Performance appraisals inform employees of what is expected of them and to what extent they are meeting those expectations. The goal is to “give feedback to improve employee performance and to align employee performance with organizational goals” (Teckchandani & Pichler, 2015). Employees want to know the objectives and how they are performing.
While there is a way to improve evaluations and how managers can provide this task more effectively, there is no guaranteed way to improve the way employees respond to an appraisal. It depends on how the employee feels that they have been treated fairly, that feedbacks were useful and motivating, and if they were satisfied with their review. This is why it is important for an appraisal system to be adequately designed for evaluating, measuring, and assessing the right performance indicators to avoid any bias (Youssef, 2012).
Bias can manifest in several forms and can influence performance appraisals. Stereotyping, the halo effect, availability, and fundamental attribution error are some biases that may be unintentionally, or intentionally, drawn upon when performing the assessment and organizations must try to make evaluators aware these pitfalls to keep evaluations valid and reliable (Youssef, 2012). Stereotyping is lumping certain groups of people together and attributing the same characteristics to them and can be considered discriminatory in nature and wholly unfair to the employee. The halo effect is when a few characteristics of an employee is considered favorable and the evaluation given is favorable even if other more important areas were not so favorable. The fundamental attribution error is when an evaluator perceives successes as internal and failures as external but imposes the opposite on employees, blaming others for failures and not giving recognition for successes.
Some advantages to a successful performance appraisals are the anticipation of awards or rewards for doing a job well. Besides correcting issues, appraisals are used for determining promotions, training decisions, performance-based pay, personnel planning (Grund & Przemeck, 2012), and certain incentives such as bonuses. An effective performance appraisal also reflects the organization’s overall effectiveness and efficiency af achieving organizational goals and