Hi guys, this blog post is part of a four blog post series that talk about the problem of Performance Appraisals as a Rating Device. All series can be found here. This post will discuss how People Favouritism can affect Performance Appraisals.
The “People-I-Like Favoritism” is quite common in our companies. I am sure everyone saw these kind of problems. How many of us have colleagues that arrive early and leave later than the boss just to impress him. How many of us see clearly that our boss has some preferred people within our group. Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins refer in their book “Abolishing Performance Appraisals “Affective reactions, liking people and not liking people, are inevitable, unavoidable consequences of human nature”.
See Tsui, Anne S., and Bruce Barry in their study “Interpersonal Affect and Rating Errors” (Academy of Management Journal. Vol. 29, No. 3, p. 597) seriously question if humans can set like bias aside, concluding their study: “This study provided robust evidence that affect directly influences the quality of performance ratings. Our results underscore the importance of encouraging raters to segregate objective judgments from subjective feelings when evaluating others. But is this really possible? If affect is in fact inescapable and irrevocable (citing R. B. Zajonc), can we reasonably expect raters to ignore or set aside their feelings when participating in performance appraisals?”
Tom and Mary also refer that these researchers found that a neutral affect actually reduced the quality of rating in some respect. This may suggest that, even if people are capable of changing their affect to neutral, it may still be problematic.
If we think of all these statements, it will not be too difficult to predict the employee’s satisfaction with the appraisal process. So here I present another reason why Performance Appraisals are not fair and effective and should be terminated.
This blog post is part of my new book that you can find here. If you are interested in being a beta reader and provide me valuable feedback, please subscribe the newsletter below. I will keep you updated with the latest status and the first drafts of new chapters.
