What is the primary use of the performance appraisal process?
• What performance areas should be included for appraisal? • Who will be responsible for setting and appraising performance standards and goals? • What type of rating format should be used? • What rules will govern the performance appraisal process? • What actions will be taken because of the performance appraisal process? Usually performance appraisal processes fail because they have not thought through and answered each of these questions. Before we briefly discuss these questions, one other complexity of performance appraisal processes needs to be reviewed. Virtually all performance appraisals in use are dependent on some person or persons having observed the employee’s performance. As obvious as this sounds, and as necessary as it is, it presents some real limitations on the usefulness of the final performance appraisal. As the above figure shows, while much of what is done on a job is typically observable, little is normally observed by the evaluators. Even less of what is observe
