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Performance appraisals, performance improvement: Is there a link?

Opinion & Analysis
Beginning of the year is the time when Supervisors and their subordinates sit down and agree on key result areas.

Beginning of the year is the time when Supervisors and their subordinates sit down and agree on key result areas which determine areas of focus in terms of performance appraisal in a given period.

Opinion by with Paul Nyausaru

Some review performance quarterly before carrying out a final appraisal at the end of the year.

It has been argued for a long time that traditional appraisals do not in themselves improve performance and if anything tend to backfire. Performance experts have also argued that most performance appraisals do not motivate employees or guide their development.

What tends to happen in most cases is that these appraisals cause conflict and tension between the supervisor and the subordinate leading to an unproductive working environment.

Most performance appraisal instruments are designed in such a way that they measure traits such as honesty, integrity, team work, compassion etc which are areas people naturally are not keen to be evaluated on.

The subjectivity that comes with that assessment of the traits has given rise to the tension that comes up due to the use of the appraisal instruments.

Honestly it is difficult to have two people entirely agreeing on evaluation of these traits and in many cases misunderstandings arising from such appraisals have been difficult to resolve.

This has resulted in appeals that do not get resolved, leading to the abandonment of the performance appraisal exercise.

It has been argued that traditional approaches to performance appraisal can be useless or counterproductive.

Researchers have revealed that even when employees are allowed to participate in performance review processes where they set clear goals with their supervisors, only a few produce a positive impact on the employee’s subsequent job performance.

This has led to some going through the performance appraisal process just to cover up for it may be an Audit’s area of interest.

Experts in quality management such as W. Edwards Deming argue that the performance of an organisation must be viewed from how it is set up. He argues that the organisation is a system of interrelated parts and that an employee’s performance is more a function of different factors such as training, communication, tools and supervisors than his or her own motivation.

This goes to show that organisational performance is ultimately a combination of the effort that comes from various members of the organisation all determined to see the attainment of the organisation’s strategic goals.

However, progressive organisations have adopted modern approaches to performance management which is the balanced score card. Each employee is assessed based on his/her scored card, based on the four perspectives that make up the concept.

The assessment is objective and results in fewer misunderstanding come the review period. So watch out to see if the performance appraisal which you are using is doing anything in terms of performance improvement.

Paul Nyausaru is Training & Development Practitioner. You can contact him on email [email protected], [email protected], website www.cshrmanagement.com Views contained in this article are personal.