Every organization has some goals and to achieve those goals organization hire people who can perform as per their standards to enable the organisation achieve its mission and vision. So performance is the key to achieve organisational goals. But to keep records and to analyse the performance, organisation needs to follow a specific processes which is known as “Performance Appraisal”. The important aspect for an organisation is not just to recruit good employees but also to retain them. Good working environment, promotions, career growth, rewards and recognition in return of their good performance will automatically retain the employees with the organisation. It is essential for an organisation to undertake different activities so that their employees feel motivated and give their best to the organisation. To increase employees morale and performance resulting in better productivity, organisations should undertake performance appraisal system.
Performance management is one, which links organisations, individual and departmental goals together. It performs many functions like deciding upon incentives and rewards to the employees on the basis of their performance and establishing good relations between the employees and the organisation. Performance appraisal is a part of performance management. It organizes the working environment in such a manner so that the best results can be obtained. The objectives of performance appraisal are is to encourage the employees for open communication so that they can directly communicate with the each other and the management. It helps in providing feedback and recognition for their performance. The process of performance appraisal also provides them the knowledge understanding of the skills required for the particular job which is assigned to them, i.e. the basic requirements for the job and expectations of the organisation. It also helps in determining the need of training for the employees for developing their skills and working environment. Performance appraisal identifies the problem areas for improvement, then providing adequate solutions for the same and also set goals to be achieved in the coming year.
Performance appraisal process is increasingly being used by organizations. Every organization uses the performance appraisal as tool to motivate their employees and to achieve organisational goals. This process is used in the both public and private sector organisations. But the said assessment process or Performance Appraisal process faces another question — whether the outcome should be allowed to be driven by the characteristics of the appraiser or quantifiable checks and processes should drive it? But on one hand performance appraisal is gaining the popularity on the other hand there are some critiques, who are raising question on the design of “performance appraisal system”.These are two diverse approaches are the Orthodox critiques and Radical critiques.
The Orthodox Critique
Orthodox critique says that there are imperfections in the design of performance appraisal and the implementation of performance appraisal is also not favorable for employees as well as for organisation. Orthodox frame work of management is based on subjectivity, i.e. we can say that this process is more over a subjective process of qualitative thus lacking on the actual quantification through the assessment. When management is evaluating the performance of an employee and judging on his/her own perceptions rather than following a process or a set of rules then it will result in a subjective decision. So, orthodox critique can results in a bias decision.
Sometime manager is the only individual who has to perform many tasks such as performance evaluation, providing feedback, training’s, etc. So as he/she is facing administrative difficulties, this can may result in skewed outcome of the affect performance appraisal process.
The halo effect assessment in orthodox critique means individual’s impression can impact on the his performance assessment. This means that if a manager has some positive impression about an employee just because of one instance then he will rate that employee high on performance rating scale, whether he deserves it or not. Same can happen if manager has some negative impression for an employee then he will assign a negative score on performance rating scale whether this employee is good on other things.
In orthodox critiques its also found doppelganger effect, which means that when we go through the whole performance appraisal data, we find similarities in various aspects between the manager who is doing performance appraisal and the employee who’s appraisal is done. So, here we find that the manager wants to promote or praise only those employees whose attitude and behaviors matches his own attitude and behavior. So, we can say that sometimes manager give rewards and recognition only to those employees who are alike him and score them high on performance appraisal scale.
Sometime its found that supervisors are showing favoritism to few subordinates just because of their personal relation. This favoritism and personal relation is not related to performance, capability or qualification of the employee and will results in cronyism. Crony effect can affect the performance of the other employees as they know that manager is doing favor to an employee and this will ultimately affect the organisation. If an performance appraisal is done by orthodox critiques then the appraisal will result in de-motivation of employees, misuse of data, issues of trust, complexity in working processes, etc.
The Radical Critique
Radical critique of performance appraisal is totally different from orthodox critiques. In radical critiques there is no place for subjectivity. In radical critiques the manager who is doing performance appraisal always follows rules and regulations of the performance appraisal cycle. In this the performance appraisal is done by management without concerning about that individual employee, what concerns to them is performance, qualification, and capability of the employee.
In radical critiques performance appraisal is more paper based process, in other words we can say that while doing performance appraisal manager scores the employee on the basis of data which he has in records about his performance.
As employees knows that their management is based on radical approach, they always obey to the rules and regulations of the organisation. Under this type of performance appraisal employees become more disciplined, active, capable, efficient and always try to initiate new approaches in the organisation.
Performance appraisal is based upon facts and figures which makes working environment more transparent. Data which is used for performance appraisal is timely updated so that whatever employees are delivering would be recorded without any discrepancy or delay. More reliability is there in radical critiques. Feedback’s which are provided by the manager to the employees are acceptable and reliable thus results in an open discussion between manager and employee. Open discussion after the feedback always motivate employees to improve themselves and work efficiently to achieve his goals as well as organizational goals.
Chances of bias decision are less. Manager can not show any favoritism to any employee as he has to support his decision with data. Because performance analysis is totally based on practicality there is a full control of management over employees behavior and working patterns which will provide employees a standardize working platform and thus reduce employees conflicts, struggle or opposition.
Individualism is observed in radical critiques as all the decisions are taken by an individual. All the rules, patterns, working conditions, goals, etc. in performance appraisal cycle are framed by individual for group of employees. Mutual benefit also become doubtful sometimes, that is whether the performance appraisal process is beneficial for both manager and employee or not. Because the evaluating pattern and assessment methods are decided by individual.
There is a assumption in radical critiques of performance appraisal that there should be a consistent reaction of both the manager and employee towards scores of appraisal ratings. It is assumed because the whole performance appraisal process is based on data and facts which are there in records.