Performance Appraisal Essay

Performance Appraisal is a formal management system that provides for the evaluation of the quality of an individual’s performance in an organization, and is usually prepared by the employee’s immediate supervisor, and the procedure typically requires the supervisor to fill out a standardized assessment form that evaluates the individual on several different dimensions and then discusses the result of the evaluation to the employee (Grote, 2002). According to Grote, too often, performance appraisal is seen merely as a once-a-year drill mandated by the personnel department, but in organizations that take performance appraisal seriously and use the system well, it is used as an ongoing process and not merely as an annual event. To obtain the best information possible if performance appraisal data must be used, four phase model of performance appraisal must be used, and these are through, performance planning, performance execution, and performance review. In performance planning, this is usually set at the beginning of the year, the manager and individual get together for a performance-planning meeting in which they discuss what a person will achieve over the next 12 months. In the performance execution, the manager provides coaching and feedback to the individuals to increase the probability of success and creates the condition that motivate and resolves any performance problems that arise and in the midway through the year, they meet to review the individual’s performance thus far against the plans and goals that they discussed in the performance planning meeting (Grote, 2002). In performance assessment, the manager reflects on how well the subordinate has performed over the course of the year, assembles the various forms of paperwork that the organization provides to make this assessment, and fills them out, and the manager also recommend a change in individual’s compensation based on the quality of the individuals work (Grote, 2002). The completed assessment form is then reviewed and approved by the appraiser’s boss, department head, or the compensation manager. In performance review, the manager and the subordinate meet, usually about an hour, and they review the appraisal form that the manager has written and talked about how well the person performed over the past 12 months, and at the end of the review meeting, they set a date to meet again to hold a performance-planning discussion for the next 12 months, at which point the performance management process anew (Grote, 2002). Self-ratings fit to this approach in the way that, it is needed by the manager in the performance assessment to be able to fully evaluate the employee.