Chapter 3 Traditional Bases for Pay: Performance at Precision

Performance Appraisals
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Performance Appraisals
Performance appraisals are evaluation techniques used by employers to provide guidance and communicate job expectations to employees and it remains to be the most controversial aspect of human resource management. Despite the availability of various performance appraisal techniques, those who are involved are still dissatisfied with them (both evaluators and those who are evaluated). The appraisal systems do not effectively deliver their intended objectives to organizations. Therefore, organizations are in a constant search for better systems that will enable them to appraise their employee performance levels. Although, there is a wide range of articles that address this issue of appraisal, this paper falls short of the available practical recommendations in the literature. Performance appraisal systems help in rewarding the employees. Therefore, employees receive compensation in the ratio of their productivity within the firm. The best method of conducting performance appraisals involves ensuring a merit pay program where employees are given an increase in pay according to their performance.
The advantage of performance appraisals is that they encourage productivity among employees. An employee would maximize their productivity in a bid to get better pay. This evaluation technique allows effective compensation of workers. As such, workers are motivated to continue working hard and achieving their targets. Moreover, the performance appraisals provide an efficient channel by which employers communicate their expectations to the employees. In turn, the employees are able to provide relevant feedback to their supervisors. This makes it easy for the employees and management to achieve the firm’s goals as well as increase productivity.
However, performance appraisal systems are likely to generate more problems than they solve. Some of them are designed such that they concentrate on the process more than the value they bring. In this regard, the designs of most performance appraisals are flawed. This reduced their effectiveness and results to litigation, especially by employees who feel they have wrongly been evaluated. Supervisors may have difficulties in informing employees who are performing poorly because of the defense and hostility it may generate from the employees. Add...