Performance Appraisal

Performance Appraisal

Introduction

The employee performance appraisal is an important career development tool for the manager and employee. The manager can help guide the employee on the path to corporate advancement, and the employee gets a clearer understanding of what is expected from her in her daily job duties. Performance appraisals have a wide variety of effects on employees that managers must identify and understand.

The best performance appraisals create a link between individual employee expectations and how the employee's work contributes to the larger organization's success. They clarify expectations that the supervisor has for the employee and help the employee prioritize his duties. Ideally, performance appraisals open the lines of communication between supervisors and employees.

Strategic Advantages

Motivation

An employee performance appraisal can act as motivation for an employee to improve his productivity. When an employee sees his goals clearly defined, his performance challenges identified and career development solutions in place to help advance his career, the effect is to motivate the employee to achieve those goals. Creating a comprehensive plan for employee development and giving employee achievements to strive for will inspire a higher level of efficiency (Irmgard Schweiger, 1994).

Clarity

Employees perform their job duties to the best of their abilities throughout the year based on guidance from management. Part of a performance appraisal is when a manager and employee review the job description and compare the employee's performance with expectations. This gives the employee a feeling of clarity and understanding that will help him better perform his job duties.

Take Responsibility

To prepare for the annual review, a manager should keep notes of all of the employee's accomplishments and challenges throughout the year. When these are presented to the employee during the appraisal, it gives the employee the opportunity to benefit from her accomplishments and accept responsibility for the performance challenges (McConnell, 2007). By claiming ownership of performance issues, the employee makes the process of career development a more personal commitment.

Teamwork

During a performance appraisal, a manager needs to take time to show the employee how his performance affects the productivity of the entire organization. When employees understand how their performance affects the ability of others to do their jobs, it helps put his own job duties into an overall company context. It helps improve the notion of teamwork among the staff, and can also encourage cooperation to achieve corporate goals.

Impact on Employees

“A carefully designed and administered performance appraisal system, which stresses the coaching aspect of evaluations, ...