Hi guys, the objective of this post is to discuss the utility of Performance Appraisals as a Rating Device. I will use four other blogs posts to justify how problematic is the use of Performance Appraisals as rating device.
Traditionally, companies think that objective measurement can happen within an appraisal process, but is this really true? Tom and Mary in their book: “Abolishing Performance Appraisals” refer that there are hundred of studies out there that attempted to evaluate the appraisal’s capability. Since decades we have been trying to change, to modify, to improve the way how appraisals are done, yet we lack of enthusiasm and commitment from supervisors and employees.
Tom and Mary state: “The net effect of fifty years of intense efforts at improving the process has failed to yield any form of appraisal that can consistently and accurately measure an individual’s performance over an extended period of time. This may be somewhat overstated in the case of very simple, highly structured, repetitive jobs, but it certainly holds true for more complex jobs, including managerial and professional jobs that are most routinely subjected to appraisal.””
Appraisal’s problems of inaccuracy and inconsistency are so common that scientists created several categories to describe the problems with appraisal’s. Below I present four different types of problems that appraisal’s raise, all these names are taken from Mary and Tom’s book.
- Categorization and Stereotype Tendencies
- People-I-Like-Favoritism
- Gender, Race, and Age Bias
- Various Types of Rating Errors
I hope this explanation helps you to understand how performance appraisals are not very useful for companies as well as employees.
This blog post is part of my new book that I am writing: Get Rid of Performance Appraisals that you can find here.
I would love to get a star rating for this post:
Hi Luis,
I think the concept is great, but you only mentioned or highlighted an issue or problem. For organizations to change from the current state to a new state they must understand what the new state is, what does it offer and why is it better than the current state?
The appraisal process is so ingrained into the culture of many organizations that there needs to be a clear roadmap and vision for them to understand and accept. Then we can facilitate or coach the change. But first we must have something to offer.
What do you think?
I think you have a fantastic good point and I think you would be a fantastic guy to belong to my list of reviewers (new book) :)
I am currently write a book exactly on this topic and I hope to tackle that and many other questions on the book, but great feedback like the one that you provided is always super useful :)
Can I add you you into the list? Right now I have the Preface and the intro :) I am counting in having the 2nd chapter ready soon.
Cheers,
Luis