QUALITY PAPER!!! GRADUATE PAPER SEE ADDITIONAL ADDED DOCS
Reference: Lussier, R. N., & Hendon, J. R. (2019). Human resource management functions, applications, and skill development. Los Angeles: SAGE.
3. Differentiate the concept of performance management and performance appraisal with three (3) to four (4) key points. Then, make your case to leadership for or against using annual performance appraisals in the organization. Be specific with your perspective.
Performance Management Systems
After we have recruited, selected, and trained employees, we must evaluate how well they perform their jobs so they know how they are doing. Therefore, performance evaluation is an important part of the jobs of managers and HRM staff. 1 We need to figure out how to manage employees’ performance over time to ensure that they remain productive and hopefully become even more capable as they progress in their careers. So the primary purpose of performance appraisal should be to help employees to continuously improve their performance. 2 Remember our earlier discussion about the fact that human resources are typically one of the few resources we can leverage to create a sustainable competitive advantage for the firm. To this end, we discuss in this section the difference between performance management and performance appraisal, and we present the performance appraisal process.
LO 8-1
Discuss the difference between performance management and performance appraisals.
Performance Management Versus Performance Appraisal
“In a knowledge economy, organizations rely heavily on their intangible assets to build value. Consequently, performance management at the individual employee level is essential and the business case for implementing a system to measure and improve employee performance is strong.” 3 Committing management time and effort to increase performance not only meets this goal but also decreases turnover rates. 4
SHRM
Q:5
Improving Organizational Effectiveness
How do we manage performance within the organization? The most common part of the process, and the one with which we are most familiar, is the performance appraisal, or evaluation. (In this chapter, we will use the terms performance evaluation, performance appraisal, and just appraisalinterchangeably.) However, the performance appraisal process is not the only thing that’s done in performance management. Performance management is the process of identifying, measuring, managing, and developing the performance of the human resources in an organization. Basically we are trying to figure out how well employees perform and then ultimately improve that performance level. When used correctly, performance management is a systematic analysis and measurement of worker performance (and communication of that assessment to the individual) that we use to improve performance over time.
SHRM
E:4
Performance Management (Performance Criteria and Appraisal)
SHRM
Q:9
Ongoing Performance and Productivity Initiatives
Performance appraisal, on the other hand, is the ongoing process of evaluating employee performance. Notice that it is an ongoing process. Employees need regular feedback on their performance, 5 so we should give them routine and candid assessments. 6 New tools that we will discuss shortly are allowing us to do this much more efficiently. Performance appraisals are reviews of employee performance over time, so appraisal is just one piece of performance management. Although we will spend most of the chapter discussing performance appraisals, there are several significant pieces to performance management that we have already covered in past chapters and others that we will cover in future chapters. We discussed “strategic planning,” which provides inputs into what we want to evaluate in our performance management system, in Chapter 2 . We also discussed the major method of identifying performance requirements in a particular job when we went through “job analysis and design” in Chapter 4 . In Chapter 7 , we discussed “training and development,” which obviously plays a part in performance management. Additionally, we will discuss motivating employees, coaching and counseling, employee relations, compensation, and other pieces in Chapters 9 through 14 . Now that we understand the difference between performance management and performance appraisal, let’s look at the performance appraisal issue in more detail.
Netflix is one company that has stopped doing formal performance appraisals.
Ryan Anson/AFP/Getty Images
Is It Time to Delete the Annual Appraisal Process?
It is worth noting right at the beginning that many people in organizations do not like performance appraisal systems and think that these systems do not have the ability to improve employee performance. One study even noted that 95% of managers are dissatisfied with their performance management system and 90% of HR managers believe the system does not yield accurate performance information! 7 Routinely, there are calls to do away with performance appraisal processes. 8 Netflix is one company that has completely stopped doing formal performance appraisals, even though the CEO noted that “excellent colleagues trump everything else.” 9 (Netflix still does complete informal 360-degree appraisals. We will introduce you to these shortly.) So why does this process continue to be used by most major organizations?
Performance management The process of identifying, measuring, managing, and developing the performance of the human resources in an organization
Performance appraisal The ongoing process of evaluating employee performance
In the past three or four years, it would seem to the average HR manager that there has been a never-ending line of companies that have decided to dump their annual performance appraisals. In addition to Netflix, a list of Fortune 500 companies like Deloitte, Adobe Systems, GE, PwC, 10 and SAP 11 have trashed their annual appraisal approaches. Looking at all of the articles written about dumping appraisals, the natural question would be, “Why are we studying this if it is going away?” The quickest answer is that it isn’t quite gone yet and probably won’t be for some time—if ever. Based on a number of different surveys in the past couple of years, around 10 to 15% of companies have decided to stop using annual reviews. The numbers were about 6% of Fortune 500 companies in 2015 12 and about 12% to 15% in 2017, 13 which leaves around 85% of those companies and many other smaller firms still using annual evaluations.
Why hasn’t the rest of the business world let go of this relic of the industrial age if it doesn’t work like it needs to? Again, the quick answer is that there is valuable information that is gained from the process; and the latest online, app-based, and/or social options have not gotten to the point yet where they can provide all of the same valuable information. “The documentation that traditional appraisals produce is a business necessity. The data collected . . . allows the organization to make important decision in a whole host of business areas.” 14 So one of the most valuable reasons for performance appraisals is to provide information for making good management decisions; and if we don’t have that information, decisions become more difficult and dangerous. In addition, at least some research shows that deleting the performance appraisal does not automatically make the organization better, and may make it worse. Research by CEB showed that “[a]t firms where reviews had been eliminated, measures of employee engagement and performance dropped by 10%. . . . Managers actually spent less time on conversations, and the quality of those conversations declined.” 15
But new ideas for some form of routine or continuous technology-based appraisal and feedback (often called “check-ins” by the firms) have proliferated over the recent past, 16 with dozens if not hundreds of tech companies now offering apps or other software solutions 17 to provide companies with the ability to give all employees constant feedback. For obvious reasons, this continuous appraisal seems to be more common in organizations that are less traditional and bureaucratic, and that are more comfortable with technology solutions. We spoke about Zappos’s holacracy earlier. Zappos is trying to use holistic feedback from all sides (a massive 360-degree evaluation) in order to evaluate its employees and encourage creativity and innovation.
Still, we have to struggle with a significant problem: Organizations legitimately use periodic appraisals to make good decisions about their employees and employee development. 18 If performance appraisals are not completed, the organization doesn’t have valid and reliable information about its human resources; and therefore it has no ability to make good decisions about things such as training, promotions, and pay raises. Because of this major issue, it is unlikely that most organizations will hit the delete button on their annual appraisal process until the newer technologies have been proven capable of defending the organization from claims of employment discrimination.
Work Application 8-1
Select a job you have or have had. Do you or did you know the organization’s mission and objectives? Briefly state the mission. If you don’t know it, find out. Do you understand how your job fits or helps to meet the organization’s mission and objectives? Explain in some detail.
Performance Appraisals
Let’s take a look now at the performance appraisal process in Exhibit 8-1. Note the connection between the organization’s mission and objectives and the performance appraisal process. Here we briefly discuss each step of the process.
Step 1: Job analysis
This is logically our first step because if we don’t know what a job consists of, how can we possibly evaluate an employee’s performance in that job? We already learned how to do a job analysis in Chapter 4 , but as shown in Exhibit 8-1, we should realize that the job must be based on the organizational mission and objectives, the department, and the job itself.
Step 2: Develop standards and measurement methods
If we don’t have standards of acceptable behavior and methods of measuring performance, how can we assess that performance? We will discuss performance measurement methods in the next part of this section; and in the section “How Do We Use Appraisal Methods and Forms?” we will discuss these topics in more detail.
Step 3: Informal performance appraisal—Coaching and disciplining
Performance appraisal should not be simply a once- or twice-a-year formal interview. As its definition states, performance appraisal is an ongoing process. While a formal evaluation may take place only once or twice a year, people need regular feedback on their performance to know how they are doing. 19 We will briefly discuss coaching in the “Critical Incidents Method” subsection of “How Do We Use Appraisal Methods and Forms?” and we will discuss it in more detail in the next chapter.
Exhibit 8-1 The Performance Appraisal Process
Step 4: Prepare for and conduct the formal performance appraisal
The common practice is to have a formal performance review with the boss once or sometimes twice a year, using one or more of the measurement forms we will be learning about. Later in this chapter, we will discuss the steps involved in preparing for and conducting the performance appraisal.
In the chapter sections to come, we discuss why we assess performance, what we assess, how we assess it, and who conducts the performanceappraisal. Then we discuss performance appraisal problems and how to avoid them, and we end the performance appraisal process with the actual formal review session. But before we leave this section, we need to understand a critically important part of each step in the performance appraisal process: accurate performance measurement.
Accurate Performance Measures
To effectively assess performance, we need to have clear standards for and methods of measuring performance. 20 The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has outlined the minimum required elements of a performance management system for goal setting, performance review, and performance improvement plans. 21 For details, visit the ANSI website at http://www.ansi.org . We need accurate standards and measures of employee performance both to effectively assess performance and to let employees know where they can improve. 22 This in turn should lead to training employees to develop the new skills they need to improve their performance. 23
Also, to be an accurate measure of performance, our measure must be valid, reliable, acceptable and feasible, specific, and based on the mission and objectives. Let’s discuss each of those requirements here.
Valid and Reliable
As in all areas of our people management process, we must do our best to make sure that all of our performance management tools are valid and reliable. Here again, we can pull out and dust off the OUCH test as a quick way to ensure fairness and equity in the performance management and appraisal process. We remember by now that OUCH stands for Objective, Uniform in application, Consistent in effect, and Has job relatedness. However, we still need to analyze validity and reliability in some detail.
We have to create valid and reliable measurement to be accurate. Recall that we discussed reliability and validity in Chapter 4 and Chapter 6 . Validmeans that a measure is true and correct; a valid measure is a factual one that measures the process that you wanted to measure. Reliable means the measure is consistent; it works in generally the same way each time we use it. 24
Acceptable and Feasible
In addition to validity and reliability, we need to look at a couple of other characteristics of our performance measures—acceptability and feasibility. 25 Acceptability means that the use of the measure is satisfactory or appropriate to the people who must use it. However, in performance appraisal, this isn’t enough. To be acceptable, an evaluation tool must also be feasible. Is it possible to reasonably apply the evaluation tool in a particular case, or is it too complex or lengthy to work well? As an example, if the performance evaluation form is two or three pages long and covers the major aspects of the job that is being evaluated, and if managers and employees both believe that the form truly evaluates performance measures that identify success on the job, then managers and employees are likely to feel that the tool is acceptable and feasible to use. However, if the manager must fill out a 25-page form that has very little to do with the job being evaluated, the manager may not feel that the form is acceptable or feasible, at least partially due to its length, even if the employees do.
Conversely, if the manager fills out a two-page evaluation that they feel is a true measure of performance in an employee’s job, but the employee feels that the evaluation leaves out large segments of what is done in the work routine, the employee may not feel that the form is acceptable and feasible. If either management or employees feel that the form is unacceptable, it most likely will not be used correctly. (This would also mean that the person would not see the evaluation as a valid measure. 26 ) And as we saw in the section on deleting the performance appraisal process, many managers and employees do not currently see their appraisal process as acceptable and feasible—a significant problem with the process.
Work Application 8-2
Assess the accuracy of the measurements of your performance on your last performance appraisal. Be sure to describe the measures’ validity, reliability, acceptability, and feasibility, plus whether the measures were specific and based on the organization’s mission and objectives.
Specific
The evaluation measure must be specific enough to identify what is going well and what is not. The word specific means that something is explicitly identified or defined well enough that all involved completely understand the issue. In performance appraisals, a specific form provides enough information for everyone to understand what level of performance has been achieved by a particular employee within a well-identified job.
Creating specific measures is the only way to use a performance appraisal to improve the performance of employees over time. The employees have to understand what they are and are not doing successfully. Many times, evaluation forms may be too general in nature to be of value for modifying employee behaviors because we want the form to serve for a large number of different types of jobs. This can create significant problems in the performance appraisal process.
Based on the Mission and Objectives
Finally, you want to make sure that your performance management system leads to the accomplishment of your organizational mission and objectives. As with everything else we do in HR, we need to ensure that the performance management process guides our employees toward achievement of the company’s mission and objectives over time. As managers, making sure of this connection will allow us to reinforce employee behaviors that aim at achieving organizational goals, and it will also allow us to identify for our employees things that they may be doing that actively or unintentionally harm our ability to reach those goals.
Thus, stating specific objectives saying exactly what each person in each job should achieve, or their performance outcomes, leads to accurate assessment that can increase performance. For some examples of inaccurate measures of performance, complete Applying the Concept 8-1.
8-1 Applying The Concept
Measurement Accuracy
Before each of the situation descriptions below, write the letter corresponding to the accuracy criterion for a measure that is NOT met in the situation.
1. valid
2. reliable
3. accepted
4. feasible
5. specific
6. based on the mission and objectives
· ____ 1. My boss is on my case because I’m not producing as much as I used to. But it’s not my fault that the machine jams more often and then I have to stop working to fix it.
· ____ 2. My boss said I have to evaluate all 25 of my employees four times a year instead of only once. I told her I don’t have the time to do it that many times. It’s just not possible to do a good review that often without cutting back on other things that are more important.
· ____ 3. My boss said I have a bad attitude and gave me a lower overall performance rating. I questioned what my attitude had to do with my performance because I get all my work done well, and by the deadline.
· ____ 4. My boss asked me to complete a self-evaluation form rating my performance. But I didn’t do it because it is her job—I let her do it.
· ____ 5. My boss told me that I was not doing a very good job. But when I asked him why, he never gave me any details to support his assessment. Good answer.
Why Do We Conduct Performance Appraisals?
As you can already see, the appraisal process gets to be extremely complicated very quickly. And remember, anytime that a process in an organization is complicated, it is going to cost a lot of money. So what’s the value provided to the organization and to the individual that makes the process of evaluating the performance of our workers so critical?
LO 8-2
List and briefly discuss the purposes of performance appraisals.
If performance appraisals are done in the correct manner, they can provide us with a series of valuable results. However, if not done correctly, evaluating employee performance can actually lead to lower levels of job satisfaction and productivity. Let’s discuss three major reasons (communicating, decision making, and motivating) why performance evaluations are completed and why they are so critical to continually improving organizational performance. 27
Communication (Informing)
The first major reason for performance appraisals is to provide an opportunity for formal communication between management and the employees concerning how the organization believes each employee is performing. All of us know intuitively that successful communication requires two-way interaction between people. “Organizations can prevent or remedy the majority of performance problems by ensuring that two-way conversations occur between managers and employees, resulting in a complete understanding of what is required, when it is required, and how everyone’s contribution measures up.” 28
Communication always requires that employees have the opportunity and ability to provide feedback to their bosses in order to make sure that their communication is understood. So in performance appraisals, the communication process requires that we as managers communicate with the employee to provide them with information about how we believe they’re doing in their job. However, the process also requires that we provide the opportunity for the employee to speak to us concerning factors that inhibit their ability to successfully perform to expectations.
Factors in a job that management may not know about can include lack of training, poorly maintained equipment, lack of necessary tools, conflict within work groups, and many other things that management may not see on a daily basis. If the communication component of the performanceappraisal process does not allow for this two-way communication, managers may not know of the obstacles that the employee has to overcome. We can resolve problems only when we know about them. So as managers, we need to communicate with our employees to find out when issues within the work environment are causing a loss of productivity so we can fix them. Thus, two-way communication is a critical component of correcting problems through the performance appraisal process.
Decision Making (Evaluating)
The second major purpose of performance appraisal is to allow management to make decisions about employees within the organization. We need to make decisions based on the information we get from our communication. Accurate information is necessary for management decision making and is absolutely critical to allow the manager to improve organizational productivity. 29 We use information from annual performance appraisals to make evaluative decisions concerning our workforce, including such things as pay raises, promotions, demotions, training and development, and termination. When we have valid and reliable information concerning each individual within our division or department, we have the ability to make administrative and performance decisions that can enhance productivity for the firm.
If, for instance, through the process of coaching (the third step of the performance appraisal process), we find that several machine operators are having trouble keeping their equipment in working order, then that information would quite likely lead to a needs assessment (as discussed in Chapter 7 ) to determine whether or not maintenance training is necessary for our group of operators. Without our rigorous evaluation process, we might not learn of this common problem in a timely fashion, and the result could be significant damage to very expensive equipment. This and similar types of information frequently come to the forefront as we go through the performance appraisal process. Therefore, decision making based on good communication is a very large part of why we take the time to do annual performance appraisals.
Motivation (Engaging)
The third major purpose of performance appraisals is to motivate our employees to improve the way they work, which in turn will improve organizational productivity overall. 30 But what is motivation, and are performance appraisals normally motivational? We define motivation here as the willingness to achieve organizational objectives. We want to create this willingness to achieve the organization’s objectives, which will in turn increase organizational productivity.
HRM in Action
Performance Appraisal
SHRM
H:7
Managing Performance
Our evaluative decisions should lead to development of employees. Returning to the above example of the machine operators having trouble keeping their equipment in working order, making the decision to train employees leads to their development, which then improves their individual performance, as well as better utilizing organizational resources.
Motivation The willingness to achieve organizational objectives
Evaluating and Motivating = Development
An effective performance appraisal process has two parts—evaluating and motivating—and it does both parts well. Evaluating is about assessing pastperformance, and motivating is about developing employees to improve their future performance. But are both parts done well? Have you ever been in a position of being evaluated and debriefed as an employee? Was the process motivational? Most of us would probably reply no. Think about that appraisal process and how it was carried out. Here we discuss problems with evaluation and how to overcome them, as well as how to motivate employees. We also suggest separating formal assessment meetings designed to evaluate or motivate.
Problems in Evaluation
A common problem in appraisals is overpowering an employee during the evaluation debrief with large amounts of negative information that they have not heard during coaching. This tends to cause the employee to “turn off” or stop listening as the manager explains what is wrong. Employees will just “raise their shields” to ward off all of the negative information. This is a natural human trait. We are naturally suspicious of negative information for a variety of psychological reasons (i.e., defensive mechanisms), so when we are presented with a large amount of negative information, we tend to discount or even disbelieve it. Therefore, employees in such situations may consider the process unfair or one-sided and not an accurate measure of their performance (not acceptable), and as a result, the evaluation may become useless as a motivator that develops the employee.
Avoiding Problems in Evaluation
To help overcome this problem during employee evaluations, an effective manager who is a good coach will generally never identify a weakness that the employee has not previously been made aware of during the formal appraisal interview. This is the key to making the appraisal acceptable to the employee. In other words, there are no surprises in a well-run evaluation. The evaluative part of the appraisal should be a review only of what the employee already knows and should be willing hear because they have been coached on their performance throughout the evaluation period.
However, avoiding surprises is not enough. 31 The appraisal debrief must be a well-rounded look at the individual employee, and it should identify both positive and negative (specific) factors in the employee’s behaviors and results within the job (and remember, the communication needs to be two-way). As the manager, we want to tell the employees what they did right but also where they have room for improvement. This more balanced approach to the debriefing process will minimize the risk that the employee will raise those shields and avoid listening.
Motivating Development
An important part of development is the need for managers to provide motivational opportunities for the employees to improve their performance over time. In other words, we need to tell them how to fix their own problems. We need to provide them with tools, training, or other methods that will allow them to improve to the point where their behavior is sufficient. Then, we must continually strive to get them to perform at an above-average level and ultimately become superior performers, helping them along the way through ongoing coaching between formal reviews.
If we provide employees with tools that allow them to improve over time, we’re not focusing on negative past results but on positive future potential results. 32 If employees are given an honest opportunity to fix something that they know is a problem and are given the necessary tools or training, most will take advantage of that opportunity. So performance appraisals can be motivational if they are properly used and debriefed.
Work Application 8-3
Assess the effectiveness of an evaluative performance appraisal you had. Did the manager present both positive and negative performance areas? Did you really listen? Were there any surprises? Explain any problems and how the evaluation could be improved.
Separating Evaluation and Development
To improve both parts of the performance appraisal, we suggest splitting the debriefing into two separate interviews. The first meeting is to evaluate the employee’s past performance, pointing out strengths and areas for improvement; the employee is asked to think about how to improve performance. At the second meeting, manager and employee jointly come up with a developmental plan that should lead to increased performance, which in turn will result in a higher future evaluative rating during the next formal appraisal. We will discuss how to conduct the two separate interviews in the “Debriefing the Appraisal” section of this chapter.
What Do We Assess?
Now that we know why we conduct performance appraisals, the next step is to figure out what needs to be evaluated. In other words, we have to decide what aspects of the individual and their performance we’re going to measure. Discovering the best options for what to evaluate would come from analyzing the essential functions and qualifications required for a particular job, or in HR terms, our job analysis. We could then use these facts to design an appraisal instrument that uses measurable and observable factors to evaluate performance. 33 However, we can’t evaluate everything that is done over the course of the year. We have to choose what we will focus on because what gets measured, and evaluated, gets done. 34 Our three primary options for what to evaluate are traits, behaviors, and results.
LO 8-3
Identify and briefly discuss the options for what to evaluate in a performance appraisal.
Trait Appraisals
Traits identify the physical or psychological characteristics of a person. Traits of an individual can be part of the performance appraisal process. There is evidence that traits such as inquisitiveness, conscientiousness, and general cognitive ability are valuable in jobs that require management and leadership skills. 35 , 36 However, we must ensure that we focus on traits that have a direct relationship to the essential functions of the job, that they are within the control of the individual, and that they are accurate measures. Can we accurately measure traits that affect job performance, can trait measures pass the OUCH test, are traits commonly measured, and should we measure traits as part of our performance appraisal process? Here we answer these questions, and we will answer these same questions for our behavior and results options.
Can We Accurately Measure Traits That Affect Job Performance?
Many traits that most of us would be likely to focus on—such as physical attractiveness, height, and extroversion—actually have been shown to have very little bearing on job performance in most cases. If we’re going to use traits in performance evaluation, we must ensure that we focus on traits that have a direct relationship to the essential functions of the job being done, and they have to be accurate measures.
Is using trait-based evaluation a good method of judging work performance? How many of us would want to have judgments made about our work based on our appearance or personality? Would you consider this to be a valid and reliable measure of your work performance? In most cases, it’s very difficult to show that personal traits are valid and reliable measures of work performance.
Give Traits the OUCH Test
Let’s take a look at trait-based measurements using the OUCH test. Is a physical characteristic such as height or a psychological characteristic such as cheerfulness, work ethic, or enthusiasm an objective measure of an individual’s work performance? We would have great difficulty in creating a quantifiable and factual link between height or enthusiasm and job performance. So when measuring traits, it’s difficult to meet the objectiverequirement of the OUCH test.
If we utilized these trait-based measures in all cases in employee evaluations, we would be able to meet the uniform in application requirement of the OUCH test. The third test—consistent in effect—would likely be extremely difficult to meet due to the fact that different racial, ethnic, social, and gender groups tend to have different physical and psychological characteristics. Remember, reliability is a measure of consistency. Physical and personality characteristics have less to do with success in the job than certain behaviors do. So it’s difficult to meet the has job relatedness test in most cases. Finally, it would be very difficult to get different supervisors to evaluate subjective traits the same, because of their own personality traits.
Traits The physical or psychological characteristics of a person
Are Traits Commonly Used to Measure Performance?
Surprisingly, if you go to the local office supply store and look at standard evaluation forms that are available in preprinted pads, you will find that they usually list many traits as part of the evaluation. Why would this be the case? The simple answer is that at least some traits, both physical and psychological, are fairly easy to identify and we assume that they are related to how the individual will perform on the job. Many of us, individually and as managers, value certain things like enthusiasm, even if enthusiasm has very little to do with the ability to do a particular job or the actual results of job performance.
Certainly, there are some jobs where enthusiasm is critical. However, being an enthusiastic employee may have very little to do with success in the job, so if we evaluate individuals based on the characteristic of enthusiasm, we might make an error in judgment concerning their performance. And if we make errors in analyzing the performance of our employees, the appraisal form becomes less valid and reliable and much less acceptable to both the individual employee and management.
Finally, if our organization happened to be sued by a former employee who claimed that they were fired based on an appraisal process that was unreliable and not valid, it would be very difficult to defend trait-based evaluation forms due to their subjective nature.
Should We Measure Traits?
Author Ken Blanchard said that there are too many evaluation items that can’t be objectively measured—such as attitude, initiative, and promotability. Therefore, it’s important to ask whether both managers and employees will agree with the measured rating as being accurate. The bottom-line test (we will call it the Blanchard test) is this: Does everyone understand why they are assessed at a specific level (evaluation) and what it takes to get a higher rating (development)? 37 We should assess only traits that meet the bottom-line test of having a direct and obvious objective relationship between the trait and success in the job.
Behavioral Appraisals
Our second option in the assessment process is to evaluate employees based on behaviors. You will recall that behaviors are simply the actions taken by an individual—the things that they do and say. Behavioral appraisals measure what individuals do at work, not their personal characteristics. Is this a good option to use in a performance appraisal process?
Can We Accurately Measure Behaviors That Affect Job Performance?
As a general rule, it is much better to use behaviors in an appraisal than it is to use traits. While an individual supervisor or manager may make a mistake in judgment about the traits of an employee, physical actions or behaviors can be directly observed; and as a result, they are more likely to be a valid assessment of the individual’s performance.
Give Behavior the OUCH Test
Let’s take a look at a behavioral evaluation using the OUCH test. Would an evaluation based on actions taken by an employee be objective? In general, directly observing and evaluating an action is significantly more objective than making an attempt to judge a trait like individual effort. If we applied the same evaluation of behaviors to all of the individuals in the same type of job, we would have a reasonable certainty that we were being uniform in application. The same thing would be true here in evaluating the concept of consistent in effect.
Behaviors The actions taken by an individual
So, it comes down to whether or not a behavior-based evaluation has job relatedness. Would a behavioral evaluation be directly related to the essential functions of a job? The answer is that it would be if we made sure that we chose behaviors that were necessarily a part of successfully accomplishing a task. For instance, if we determine that a person acts correctly in filling out a requisition form, putting the proper information in the correct blocks, and providing the requisition to the appropriate person who would then order the material, then we are assessing behaviors that are job related. If, however, we evaluated the action of walking to the lunchroom and walking back to one’s workstation, would we be measuring a valid job-related behavior? The answer is more than likely no. Of course, this is a silly example, but it should help you understand that no matter what we do in the evaluation process, we need to ensure that our actions are job related.
OK, but would behavioral evaluations be defensible in the situation of our fired employee above? Would it be possible for us to show that our evaluation process was valid and reliable? If we choose to measure job-related behaviors, it becomes much easier for the organization to defend the validity and reliability of the appraisal process. Observation of actions that are directly related to a job would provide at least some presumption of validity as well as reliability, purely because the behaviors are directly job related. Again, if we chose behaviors that could not be directly associated with the job, the validity and reliability of the measures would be suspect.
Should We Measure Behavior?
Are behaviors that measure performance more acceptable to the individual employee and the managers than personal traits? In fact, evidence shows that most individuals are very comfortable with the evaluation of their performance being based on “what they do,” not “who they are.” In general, the most useful and therefore most acceptable feedback to employees is feedback on specific job-related behaviors. 38 As managers, though, we still need to be cognizant of the fact that a behavioral evaluation can be a poor measure of work performance unless the behaviors chosen are directly applicable to being successful in the job. So as with traits, the Blanchard test asks whether employees understand why they are assessed at a specific level (evaluation) and what it takes to get a higher rating (development). 39
Results Appraisals
Our final option is to evaluate the results, or outcomes, of the work process. Results are simply a measure of the goals achieved through a work process. Using results as an evaluation measure provides management with an assessment of the goals that were achieved in a particular job over time.
Can We Accurately Measure Results That Affect Job Performance?
Is measuring the outcomes of a particular individual’s job a valid and reliable measure of that person’s performance? Well, results are certainly concrete measures of performance. However, could results of a job have been skewed based on factors that were outside the control of the individual who is performing that job? The answer is obviously that the results could be affected by many other factors besides the individual’s performance. For example, standards could be set too low or high, and equipment and machines don’t always work correctly. As a result, employees can’t do as much, or any, work.
Even though this is true, the measurement of results is the final organizational measure of success. The results produced through organizational processes provide the company with its return on investment—in this case, its investment in the people in the organization. So, organizations really like to measure results.
Give Results the OUCH Test
Let’s take a look at the OUCH test concerning results-based evaluations. Is a result achieved in a particular job a concrete, factual measure that can easily be quantified? Obviously, results are a very objective measure of what has happened in that particular job. If we apply the same results-based measure to each similar job, then our measure is uniform in application. The measure of results would almost certainly be consistent across different groups of employees, so we would also meet the consistency in effect requirement of the OUCH test. And of course, if we are measuring the results of what happens in a job, we are certainly providing a measure that has job relatedness. So with a quick scan, we can see that a results-based performanceappraisal meets the requirements of the OUCH test better than do either of the other two options.