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Racial Bias
Most performance evaluation programs are based on supervisor ratings, which are
subjective human judgments that can be influenced by personal factors and
prejudices.
Race discrimination is known to persist in job assignment, pay, promotion and other
personnel decisions.
E.g. an analysis of ratings given by 20,000 supervisors showed that both black and
white supervisors gave higher ratings to subordinates of their own race (Mount,
Sytsma, Hazucha & Holt, 1997).
Other studies have shown that black employees receive lower performance appraisals
than white workers from both white and black raters.
But I/O psychologists who examined employment data from 21,000 workers in 10
major job categories concluded that the lower performance ratings assigned to blacks
may reflect their somewhat lower job-related ability and experience levels.
Since the ability and experience measures were all related to job performance, the
supervisors may be accurately representing performance differences between black
and white workers.
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Gender Bias
Sex bias in performance appraisal has been reported more often in laboratory studies
that simulate work situations than in research conducted on the job.
Many studies have reported that appraisal ratings for the same job do not differ
significantly by sex.
It has been noted that if women constitute less than 20% of a work group, they receive
lower performance ratings than men. But when they make up more than half of a
work group, they are rated more highly than men.
This effect was found to operate only for women workers, not for men or black
workers.
Age Bias
The evidence shows that older workers tend to receive significantly lower ratings than
younger workers on measures of self-development, interpersonal skills and overall job
performance.
But job proficiency does not necessarily decline with age > raters may be basing
their assessments on their expectations of an older workers skills rather than on his or
her actual job performance.
Criteria for Compliance
Performance appraisal systems which depend on having one person evaluate another,
provide opportunities for unfair treatment in terms of pay, promotion and other job
outcomes.
For organizations to ensure compliance with fair employment practices, performance
appraisals should be based on job analyses to document those critical incidents and
specific behaviors that are related to successful job performance.
The appraisers should focus on these actual job behaviors rather than on personality
characteristics.
They should review the ratings with the employees who are being evaluated and offer
training and counseling to employees who are not performing well.
Also, they should be trained in their duties, have detailed written instructions about
how to conduct the evaluation and observe the workers on the job.
All relevant notes, records and supporting documentation must be well organized and
maintained to ensure the accuracy and objectivity of the appraisals and to support the
companys positions in any future challenges from workers who claim they were
treated unfairly.
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To establish the validity of selection devices, they must be correlated with some
measure of job performance.
Therefore, a major purpose of performance appraisal is to provide information for
validating employee selection techniques.
Training Requirements
Employee Improvement
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Appraisals can also suggest how employees might change certain behaviors or
attitudes to improve their work efficiency. Workers have a right to know what is
expected of them what they are doing well, and how they might improve.
In organizations, rewards are in the form of salary increases, bonuses, promotions and
transfers to positions providing greater opportunity for advancement.
To maintain employee initiative and morale, these challenges in status cannot depend
on a supervisors personal bias but must be based on a systematic evaluation of
employee worth.
Performance appraisals provide the foundation for these decisions and also help to
identify those employees with the potential and talent for contributing to the
companys growth and expansion.
Opposition to Performance Appraisal
Labor Unions
Usually labor unions require that seniority (length of service) rather than any
assessment of employee merit be taken as the basis for promotion.
However, length of job experience alone is no indication of the ability to perform a
higher-level job.
Senior people should be given the first opportunity for promotion, but they should be
qualified for that promotion on the basis of their skills, not solely because of length of
service > Performance evaluations can provide a reliable basis for these decisions.
Employees
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Managers
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We must first evaluate the production in terms of the number of units produced.
We also have to check for differences in quality in these units.
Then we must take into consideration other factors that may have influenced that
production output.
Such factors may be environmental (noise, distraction) or relevant to the content of
the job to be performed (simple or complex outputs).
Another factor influencing performance is length of job experience. In general, the
longer employees are on the job, the greater is their productivity.
So, the more of these influences that must be taken into account, the less objective is
the final appraisal because the impact of these extraneous factors requires raters to
make personal judgments.
Thus, even with production jobs in which a tangible product can be counted,
performance appraisal may not always be completely objective.
In repetitive jobs, such as much assembly-line work, subjective judgments may have
less impact. In such instances, a straightforward record of quantity of output suffices
as a measure of job performance.
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When this information is used to help employees develop and refine their job skills
(instead of punishing them for taking long rest breaks, for example), most workers
hold a favorable attitude toward electronic monitoring.
Many employees like this high-tech performance appraisal technique because it
ensures that their work will be evaluated objectively, not on the basis of how much
their supervisor may like or dislike them.
Also, since what is measured is factual, employees may legitimately argue a case for
better pay or benefits.
Stress and electronic performance monitoring
Many employees also find it stressful. Employee responses on self-report inventories
have shown that approximately 80% report feeling stressed by the use of this
technique (Carayon, 1993).
The monitoring of individual job performance is far more stressful for that employee
than when the performance of the work group as a whole is monitored. In the latter
case, the individuals performance is combined with that of other group members.
Both field and laboratory studies show that people who work alone experience greater
stress from electronic monitoring than people who work as part of a cohesive group,
even when they are monitored individually. The social support provided by the other
members of the group serves to reduce stress.
The stress of continuous monitoring is known to lead workers to focus more on the
quantity of their output than the quality.
Thus, the stress of electronic monitoring can lead to a reduction in work quality,
which has a negative effect on overall job performance and satisfaction.
Advantages of electronic monitoring:
it invades privacy;
may increase stress and reduce job
satisfaction;
may lead workers to focus on
quantity of output at the expense of
quality;
may transform the work environment
into a sort of electornic sweatshop.
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Written Narratives
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Rating Technique
Ranking Technique
Paired-Comparison Technique
Forced-Distribution Technique
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Superior
Better than average
Average
Below average
Poor
10%
20%
40%
20%
10%
If your college instructors grade on a curve, then you are already familiar with forced
distribution. The top 10% of the class receives a grade of A, regardless of their
specific test scores. The next 20% receives Bs, and so on, until all grades are forced
into the categories of the distribution resembling the normal curve.
Disadvantages: it compels a supervisor to use predetermined rating categories that
might not fairly represent that particular group of workers. All workers in a group
may be better than average or superior in job performance, and all deserve good
ratings.
Forced-Choice Technique
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I/O psychology research comparing BARS and BOS techniques has been
inconclusive. Some studies demonstrate the superiority of one technique over the
other; other studies fail to confirm these findings, indicating the superiotiy of BOS.
Assessment ceneters do not assess actual job behavior but rather a variety of activities
that are like those encountered on the job.
Research has shown high reliability and validity of assessment-center evaluations
when they are used for performance appraisal.
Evaluation by Superiors
Most frequently used technique for the performance appraisal of managers. Standard
rating sheets are rarely used.
Typically, the rater writes a brief descriptive essay about the individials performance.
An evaluation by an immediate superior is often supplemented by the judgments of
executives at higher levels.
Self-Evaluation
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Managers who overestimated their abilities were found to perform more poorly on the
job than managers whose ratings of their own abilities were more accurate.
Another study found that effective leadership behavior was positively related to selfratings for personnel whose self-ratings agreed with the ratings of their superiors, but
not for personnel who overestimated their abilities.
Although self-ratings can be a useful part of a performance appraisal program, their
value as a sole technique is questionable.
A meta-analysis of research on self-ratings suggests that in general they do not
correlate highly with supervisor ratings.
Evaluation by Subordinates
Multisource Feedback
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Halo effect: the tendency to judge all aspects of a persons behavior or character on
the basis of a single attribute.
A supervisor who scores an employee high on one factor of a merit rating scale may
tend to grade that person high on all other factors.
This distortion is particularly likely to occur when a high rating is given on one or two
traits and the other traits to be rated are difficult to observe, unfamiliar, or not clearly
defined.
One way to control the halo effect is to have more than one person rate a worker, on
the assumption that any personal biases will tend to cancel each other out.
Another is to have supervisors rate all subordinates on one trait or characteristic at a
time instead of rating each person on all items at once.
I/O psychology research suggests that the halo effect may be less a problem than
previously thought. Recent research suggests that the halo effect deals with the raters
general impression of the ratee rather than with specific behaviors.
Most-Recent-Performance Error
Memory is clearer for events that have occured more recently, but recent behavior
may be atypical or distorted by extraneous factors (e.g. illness, marital problems). Or
if a worker is aware that a performance evaluation is due, s/he may strive to work
more efficiently just before the rating.
One way to reduce it, is to require more frequent appraisals. By shortening the time
between performance reviews, there is less tendency to forget a workers usual
behavior.
Making supervisors aware of the possibility that this type of error can occur can also
be effective in reducing it.
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Role Conflict
Role conflict: a situation that arises when there is a disparity between job demands
and the employees personal standards.
Contradiction or disparity between the jobs demands and the supervisors standards
of right and wrong. Role conflict and the stress associated with it may lead
supervisors to give higher-then-justified performance ratings.
Improving Performance Appraisals
Training: Training the persons who conduct performance appraisals involves:
(1) creating an awareness that abilities and skills are
usually distributed in accordance with the normal
curve, so that it is acceptable to find broad
differences within a group of workers, and
(2) developing the ability to define objective criteria for
workers behaviors the standards or average
performance levels against which workers can be
compared.
The more actively the raters are involved in the training process, the greater the
positive effects. Having raters participate in group discussions and in practice sessions
to provide feedback to ratees generally produces better results than having raters
attend lectures about the rating process.
Providing Feedback to Raters.
The Postappraisal Interview
In order for performance appraisal programs to provide employees the means for selfimprovement, the job performance ratings and the recommendations of the appraisers
must be communicated to the employees.
Offering Feedback: Usually accomplished during a postappraisal interview between
worker and supervisor, a situation that can easily become antagonistic, even hostile,
especially when a performance evaluation contains criticism.
Negative feedback during a postappraisal interview can make employees angry and
lead them to reject any criticism.
Employees may attempt to shift the blame for any alleged deficiencies in job
performance by dismissing the usefulness of the appraisal, downgrading the
importance of the job or criticizing the supervisor.
Reaction to criticism: The primary purpose of the postappraisal interview is to
stimulate employees to improve their job performance.
Some workers, when criticized will act to exaggerate their faults coming to work
late or missing more days of work as an imagined means of revenge.
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If workers are told that they ask for assistance too frequently, they may stop doing so
and, as a result, make more mistakes. In such instances, criticism can lead to a
deterioration in motivation and job performance.
It may also be unrealistic to expect that a brief meeting every 6 or 12 months will
provide sufficient impetus for employees to change.
In addition, it may be unwise to believe that supervisors, unless that are specially
trained, possess the insight and the skill to diagnose the reasons for a workers
unsatisfactory job performance and to prescribe a program for improvement.
If feedback on employee performance were provided frequently and competently and
were not restricted to the formal postappraisal interview, employee motivation to
change job behavior and to persist in that behavior could be enhanced.
Feedback has a greater effect when employees are allowed to ask for feedback from
their supervisors at any time rather than having to wait until it is provided are the
postappraisal interview.
Improving postappraisal interviews: Employees are more likely to be satisfied with
postappraisal inteviews and to follow their supervisors suggestions about improving
job performance under the following conditions:
1. Employees should be allowed to participate actively in the appraisal process.
2. The postappraisal interviewer should adopt a positive, constructive and
supportive attitude.
3. The interviewer should focus on specific job problems rather than on the
employees personal characteristics.
4. The employee and the supervisor should establish jointly specific goals to be
achieved in the period before the next appraisal.
5. The employee should be given the opportunity to question, challenge, and
rebut the evaluation without fear of retribution.
6. Discussions of changes in salary and rank should be linked directly to the
performance appraisal criteria.
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