Appraisal and performance management

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Introduction:

Definitions of Performance Management

In the perfect world, we would all achieve our employer’s objectives effectively, without being supervised (overseen), helped or developed in any way. Without some form of monitoring, guidance and control, we would not know how we are doing and nor will the employer. So, an employer needs some kind of system to address this issue. That is where managing performance comes in.

Performance Management

A business needs to ensure its employees are performing effectively. It will wish to:

Identify areas which are unsatisfactory

It may wish to find areas where employees need to be trained and developed.

The term ‘Performance Management’ came into use in the 1980s. It refers to the practice of setting targets, measuring performance against these and suggesting courses of action. An increasingly important way of getting feedback on employee performance is through appraisal. Appraisal is also known as ‘Appraisals- Performance Reviews’. The person who is appraising is called the ‘appraiser’ and the person being appraised is the ‘appraisee’ as defined by Lewis, R. andivitt, (2000)

Adcock, F. & Birth, I. Trivitt, (1988) has stated the benefits of performance appraisal as being:

It helps to identify training needs.

It may reveal other problems for example, there may be workplace difficulties with other staff (e.g. It might be caused by sexual or racial harassment).
It may untap useful new skills.

It improves communications between employees and managers, a few words of encouragement and praise for doing a good job are often highly motivating.

It provides disciplinary documentation- if the employer needs to dismiss somebody, the existence of through appraisal records which identify the person’s inabilities or lack of effort will be very useful.

In Depth in to Performance Management and appraisal:

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT and APPRAISAL

Adcock, F. & Birth, I. Trivitt, (1988) identify that ‘Performance Management absorbs the previous concept of ‘appraisal’ within a structured, active, on-going process that ensures ...