Performance Evaluations, Research Paper Example

Performance evaluation is one of the processes of personnel management which is also known as performance appraisal. The whole process of performance evaluation is done by use of job analysis information as the standards. Job analysis is the systematic study of a job in order to determine its nature, characteristics and kind of skills and experience required for its successful performance. Performance appraisal helps to know whether the standard the standard set in the organization are being met, help in awarding employees, give feedback to employees in terms of quality and quantity of job performance, provides information on the need of training and development and can generally be used in making personnel decisions.

Port Angeles (n.d.) gives several guidelines that generally define the performance evaluation criteria and these are customer service, technical job knowledge, verbal and written communication skills, quality and quantity of work, attendance and reliability, risk management and safety, teamwork and leadership. For the customer service, the employer analyses the commitment of the employee towards the customer in terms of how he responds to the customer and his competence in handling customers. He should be seen to make an extra effort to ensure that the customer is respected, understood with optimum level of professionalism.

The employer also seeks for the skills and understanding of daily tasks including the technical job knowledge. The employee’s ability to upgrade on his skills and his flexibility towards new techniques is also a major area to consider. Communication is a key aspect in any organization and every employee should be capable of expressing their ideas and information in a way that is acceptable both in the organization and to all individuals. Listening is a very important part in the communication process which should be assessed closely. The quality of work is measured by checking the extent of goals met, accuracy and the satisfaction of the employer regarding the job. Quantity is checked by assessing the amount of responsibility the employee is willing to accept at any time.

It is also important that the employee relates well with his colleagues so that it can enhance teamwork. He should therefore be seen to have a positive attitude towards his fellow employees and showing commitment in working together to achieve the goals of the organization. The employee also needs to be reliable and his consistence in attendance and delivering what is expected of him is measured. It is important to check the risk management and safety. This comprises of his dedication towards reduction of risks from workers compensation issues of liability. Leadership is another essential area that needs to be measured in the employee. This is especially used when evaluating the management or supervisors and is done by measuring their qualities which helps in meeting performance objectives.

The organization under discussion is currently having a performance evaluation form that focuses mostly on personal characteristics and relationship with fellow workers. The other item that is included in the evaluation form is neatness of the workspace which is a mere thing compared to the standard performance evaluation. There are other important aspects that should be considered in evaluating performance of employees as discussed above and that are where this organization needs to focus on.

There are several methods of performance evaluation and one of them is peer evaluation. Peer evaluation involves appraisal between employees in the organization. The method is considered to be very effective because the employees understand each other better since they have been together. Selestay (2007) uses the classroom scenario to express the pros and cons of peer evaluation. Some of the advantages that can be borrowed from Selestay’s idea are that the students can even end up understanding the requirements of the teacher and curriculum. This is so because students will mostly spend time with each other exchanging different ideas and will end up learning from each other hence improve the quality of their work. Peers in an organization can therefore understand the whole concept of evaluation and job description. Another advantage stated is that peer evaluation helps the employees to develop an ownership sense in the process of performance appraisal. It is therefore important because the employee need to have their voices heard, to witness a fair system in the organization and to build commitment to the achievement of the organization’s achievement.

Selestay outlines several disadvantages still using the classroom scenario. The first is that peer evaluation is done without the teacher in the picture (management in this case). Though there is a clear direction on how to go about everything, the peers are given the freewill to do what they feel is best as they evaluate their fellow students (employees). This could therefore lead to wrong interpretation of the information provided for use during the peer evaluation. These peers are always not on the same level and when they are told to evaluate each other, they could either be a setback in failing to perform effectively if told to appraise a person who has higher capabilities or when someone is at a lower level and is meant to evaluate someone who has a higher rank can lose the self-esteem.

There are several techniques that can used in performance evaluation are; ranking technique. Ranking technique is whereby employees with similar duties are compared with each others as they perform their duties. Basis for this kind of comparison is qualities required for the job and how employees are exercising the qualities. Employees are ranked from the best to the poorest with the best thing given first position and others follow. This method is very simple to conduct but is prone to several weaknesses which could be biasness of the person doing the appraisal, difficulty in comparing members since most of them could display similar task and it humiliating to those employees ranked last.

North Dakota (n.d) explains about the 360-degree feedback or the multisource assessment which involves gathering information from customers who directly deal with the employee so as to provide feedback the customers here are classified into two; internal and external. Internal customers are those that are close to the employee like co-workers and the immediate supervisor while external customers are those that are distant from the employee and would include; staff from different agencies, clients and consultants. This method provides a wide perspective on how the employee is performing his task. It helps in identifying the areas that would require improvement, guides in change of behavior and ensures that there is an improvement in performance. This method has a positive effect on the employee because it makes them feel accountable to customers since they also have a say in rating performance.

The other method as described by North Dakota is self appraisal which is where employees are given a chance to evaluate their own performance and express their findings without any kind of influence by other people. Another way of self appraisal could be where the employee follows a set of points that are used for comparison. These points are set by supervisors having considered certain factors. This method is advantageous in the sense that it brings interaction between subordinates and supervisors, better accountability and commitment towards expectations on performance. The supervisors are still seen to have authority here because they write reviews and communicate about employee’s performance.

During performance evaluation, there are possible errors that could occur and these could be; lack of job description, managers may not see the benefit for performance appraisal, poorly design in terms of tools and format and the fact that performance appraisal has been reduced to salary description thus ignoring other important objectives. Other errors include personal bias which can exist in form of racism, sex or tribalism. An evaluator may have an opinion of a particular sex and thus evaluate them poorly because he doesn’t expect anything good from them.

There is also a recency error where in an annual evaluation, a supervisor may give undue emphasis during the last two or three months and ignore performance level prior to this practice leads to un-even performance as well s the attitude of playing the game because employees can relax during initial months and start overworking in last few months towards performance appraisal period. The hallo effect is another common error which exists where a rater assigns the same rating to each factor being evaluated in an individual especially based on one incidence that the rater remembers. Finally, there is the strictness or leniency error which occurs when the rater is overly strict/ lenient in evaluating. This could result to rating everyone in the same category.

There are several things that need to be done to improve the performance evaluation in the situation which are creating an performance evaluation system that is simple to design, operate and understand, consider the employees back ground, there should be a specific objective in mind when designing the form and all information geared should be geared towards the objective intended. The appraisal system should be viewed regularly, involvement of both the employees and supervisors in the whole process, include the standard contents of a performance appraisal form and link evaluation to rewards.

References

North Dakota (n.d). Management: Performance Management. Retrieved on December 21, 2009 from http:// www.nd.gov/hrms/managers/guide/perfeval.html

Port Angeles (n.d.) Performance Evaluation Criteria Definition. Retrieved on December 21, 2009 from http://www.mrsc.org/GovDocs/p54perfevaldef.PDF

Selestay T. (2007). Pros and Cons of Peer Evaluation as a Component of Grading and Coursework. Retrieved on December 21, 2009 from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Social_and_Cultural…/19.5.3