Performance Appraisal by Shilpi Singhvi
HRM 6020 CRN 20309 – Strategic Recruiting, Training & Performance Management
Date : 11th Feb 2013

Abstract
Performance appraisal is a strategic approach through disciplinary documentations to put all the employees on the same page and manage their performance. In the outset of a given period; manager with his employees set specific, measurable, quantifiable goals, which are evaluated through out the year under coaching, guidance and support to reward, develop and promote – major functions of performance appraisals.
The process of performance appraisals offer motivational and energizing feedback which contributes to highlighting the employee’s job performance, which is often linked to continued employment, merit pay, bonuses, bonuses, promotions, and future projects. It also identifies gaps, if any, in training or areas of expertise or interests and leads toward further education, career paths and planning.

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL
A performance appraisal is a review and discussion of an employee's performance of assigned duties and responsibilities. The appraisal measures skills and accomplishments with reasonable accuracy and uniformity. It is a tool to help organization to identify areas for performance enhancement and to help promote professional growth.
Objectives: It’s critical to have clarity about the overall objectives. If manager and employee disagree on what expectations are, it is difficult to conduct a productive meeting. Ideally, it is observed, performance appraisals are most accurate and result oriented when the employees have been involved in their creation earlier in the year and fully “buys into them.” Grote, D. (1996). Performance Appraisal can be done with following objectives in mind: to maintain records in order to determine compensation packages, wage structure, salaries raises, etc.to identify the strengths and weaknesses of employees to place right men on right job, to provide a feedback to employees regarding their performance and related status, to review and retain the promotional and other training programs and lastly, It serves as a basis for influencing working habits of the employees.
Approaches: There are five common ways of conducting a performance appraisal. Checklist contains a list of job tasks, and the manager conducting the performance appraisals checks off those tasks that have been completed satisfactorily. It is only 2-point scale. Rank ordering is an ordinal scale, which hides between groups of employees evaluated by different managers. In this approach the manager ranks his subordinates in the order of their performance. Narrative appraisals require managers to write an essay about the job performance of the employee. This approach no doubt has richer description like narrating mitigating and aggravating circumstances, the situational constraints and unexpected events, but the results are in words and not in figures. Also, the quality of narrative appraisals, depend on the writing skills of the rater. York, K. (2010)
Graphic rating scales (GRS)- subordinates are judged on 'how much' of that factor or trait they possess. Typically, the raters use a 5- or 7-point scale; however, there are as many as 20-point scales. Grote, D. (1996) Behavioral Checklists and Scales: behaviors are more definite than traits. A BARS is a kind of GRS in which evaluation of the employee’s job performance, is based on points on the scale (the anchors) and behaviors (Smith and Kendall, 1963). The point to notice is that BARS are job specific and is time consuming to develop, requiring the time to collect a large number of critical incidents, clustering and reallocating the critical incidents, and then scaling the critical incidents. York, K. (2010)
When and Who conducts performance appraisal : In a recent research study concerning the timeliness of PAs, “one of the respondents even suggested that the performance review