Overview

1
Overview

• Why do we appraise employees?
• Performance criteria
• Methods for assessing job performance
• Legal issues in performance appraisal
• Future issues and challenges

2
Why appraise employees?

• Administrative decisions
• Employee development and feedback
• Criteria for research

3
Performance Criteria

• Definition A standard against which you can
  judge performance (weve seen this in selection,
  validation, and training)
• Two types of criteria
• ultimate or theoretical criterion
• actual criterion
• imperfect indicator of theoretical criterion

4
Actual vs. Ultimate Criteria
Ultimate criterion
Actual criterion
Criterion relevance
Criterion contamination
Criterion deficiency
5
Problems with Actual Criteria

• Criterion contamination
• biases
• unreliability
• criterion deficiency
• criterion relevance (you want lots of this)
• Level of specificity
• task level(better for feedback)
• job level(better for administrative decisions)

6
Criterion Complexity

• Most jobs are multidimensional
• Need to assess all dimensions -- two possible
  approaches
• Composite criterion approach
• Multidimensional approach
• Dynamic Criteria

7
Summary

• Why appraise employees?
• Performance criteria
• Actual vs. Ultimate criteria
• Problems with Criteria

8
Objective Measures

• definition counts of job related behaviors and
  of job-related results
• Examples
• days absent
• widgets produced
• sales volume
• number of accidents or errors
• amount of scrap material produced

9
Objective Measures (cont.)

• Advantages
• Usually easy to interpret
• Individuals easily comparable
• Can be tied to organizational objectives
• Often already in corporate records

• Disadvantages
• not suitable for all jobs
• meaning of number not always obvious
• data from records may be incorrect
• criterion deficiency
• what is measured may not be under individuals
  control

10
Subjective Measures

• Types of measures
• graphic rating form
• behavior-focused rating form
• Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS)
• Mixed Standard Scale (MSS)
• Behavior Observation Scale (BOS)

11
Subjective Measures (cont.)

• Who should rate performance?
• Supervisor ratings
• 360-degree feedback
• Rater bias and error
• halo
• Distributional errors
• leniency
• severity
• central tendency

12
Rater Biases, cont.

• Primacy and Recency
• Control of rater bias and error
• behavior focused ratings scales
• training
• rater error training
• observation training
• Factors influencing performance ratings
• attraction
• past behavior
• mood

13
Legal Issues

• CRA 1964 applies to performance appraisal, too,
  not just selection
• A well designed performance appraisal system
  should be legally defensible
• Legally defensible systems are likely to be seen
  as more fair

14
Summary

• Objective Measures
• Types
• Advantages and disadvantages
• Subjective Measures
• Types
• Advantages and disadvantages
• Rater biases
• Legal issues