One of the most dreaded processes in the corporate regime is the concept of performance appraisals. It is not just the employees who feel that this concept has lost its relevance; even the owners of the process feel the same. Even when there is no mandate of government instruction for the same, and when everyone eventually hates it, then it is nearly pointless to conduct such an activity. It is thus right to say that performance appraisals is a concept that has long lost significance for the employees as well as for the performing team of the process.
There are some serious problems associated with the concept of Performance appraisals that makes this so very unpopular amongst the employees are:
Feedback Issues:
Every employee wants to know how they are doing and feel the need to be appreciated if their performance is up to the mark. Many researchers have highlighted that employees require more feedbacks than an average manager provides. There has to be an effective communication channel between the employees and the management. Most of employees feel aggravated when the feedback session is superficial or rushed. It is even seen that most employees feel that the manager in power does not possess any requisite skills to provide an effective feedback. Therefore, this significance is no longer of any significance in the current scenario.
No Accountability:
Most of the managers perform the job that is half assessed and they are not penalized for the same. It is just not a consideration that whether the feedback so provided is justifiable or not. It can be a demeaning process for the employees for there is no accountability measure for the manager providing feedback.
Biased Rating:
There is a lot of contamination in the performance appraisal processes. There are a very few managers who rate the employees on the objective criterion. The consideration of the non-performance based factors in the process of rating makes the employees lose all their belief in the system.
Secrecy of the assessment:
Performance appraisals are often kept secret and this is where it loses all its charm. The managers often play favorites, and provide biased ratings in favor of those whom they like irrespective of their performances. Keeping these ratings, a secret is a complete drawback.
Rating Errors:
Sometimes the manager also feels burdened and pressurized and thus adopts a lenient approach and thus gives all the employees high ratings in order to avoid the conflicts. At times to justify the ratings he may give all his employees average ratings close to the central tendency and it may as well happen that at times the manager sets unreasonably high standards that not even achievable and gives the employees poor ratings. This inefficiency or errors in the system make it another reason for the process to be ignored by the employees.
The original performance appraisal practice is a strong managerial foundation that is based on the approach that says the ratings have to be appropriate and honestly reviewed. However, no performance appraisal abides by these mandates. Performance appraisals are of significance to the employees and managers mostly consider it a sheer waste of time.
Performance appraisal techniques have to be made effective if they have to skillfully incorporated in the corporate portals. Performance appraisal need complete transformation if they have to be made employee and management friendly. Effective coaching and more participation of the employees can help evolve this concept in a better and an enhanced way, which is at least of some significance in tracking the performance of the employees.
Summary: The practice of performance appraisal is a phenomenon that is hardly appreciated by the employees or by the managers. It has lot of drawbacks that makes it such an ignored process.
