Course Title: Human Resource Management

Course Code: MBA 501

Homework 1
Topic: Rating issues of Performance Appraisal

Submitted to:
Kazi Mamunur Rahman
Adjunct Faculty
School of Business
University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh

Submitted by:
Hira Mohammad Abdullah
Id no. 172051017
MBA 501: Section 1
Spring 2018

University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh

April 22, 2018
Process of Performance Appraisal:

1. Use the tools in the evaluation system: The actual rating levels themselves are
usually dictated by your organizations and consist of a rating range from bad to good, though
these actual terms are often replaced with euphemisms. A scale with five rating levels, for
example, may consist of "Unsatisfactory," "Minimally Successful," "Fully Successful,"
"Superior" and "Exceptional." Other rating level scales may simply consist of numbers 1 to
5. Using the system in place is fair to the employee and can quantify her performance, and
also keeps rating levels consistent across all employees.

2. Rate the work performance: This may seem obvious, but you may fall into the
trap of considering too much how well you get along with the employee and how close the
two of you are. Instead of being influenced by these factors, which aren’t directly related to
her performance, keep strictly to her actual performance.

3. Take notes throughout the year: It is challenging when writing a performance

review to recall all the positive and negative behaviors of the employee over the course of the
year and there is a chance you will forget important activities or events that will impact the
review one way or the other. Taking notes will help you document more details and give a
more accurate rating level.

4. Consider the employee’s skill level and previous review: In a sense,

you are rating the employee against herself, as a brand new employee with little experience
will not be rated as stringently as someone who has been in position for some time. If an
employee does not show improvement year-over-year even with guidance and instruction,
you may rate the employee lower in that category with each subsequent performance review.

5. Write a narrative to go with your rating: Simply assigning a number or a

"satisfactory" does not give the employee much feedback. Add some text to flesh out why
you are giving the rating level you assigned.

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6. Discuss the rating levels with your employee: After completing a
performance evaluation form and handing it to your employee for review, sitting down for a
one-on-one will help her understand the ratings. In addition, during the course of the
conversation she may give you pushback and after some explanations of a particular
performance issue, convince you to change your rating level.

Problems of Performance Appraisal:

1. Central Tendency: This occurs when employees are incorrectly rated near the
average or middle of scale. The attitude of the rater is to play safe. This safe-playing attitude
stems from certain doubts and anxieties which the raters have while assessing the rates.

2. Halo Error: A halo error takes place when one aspect of an individual’s performance
influences the evaluation of the entire performance of the individual, just as the assessment
of the performance of a student in his or her examination being influenced by the opening
paragraph of every answer. If the introductory paragraph is poorly written, the chances of
scoring high marks in that answer are diminished, however good the subsequent portion of
the essay may be.
In an organization, a halo error occurs when an employee who works late constantly might be
rated high on productivity and quality of output as well as on motivation. Similarly an
attractive or popular employee might be given a high overall rating. Rating employees
separately on each of a number of performance measures and encouraging raters to guard
against the halo effect are two ways to reduce the halo effect.

3. Rater Effect: This includes favoritism, stereotyping, and hostility. Excessively high or
low scores are given only to certain individuals or groups based on the rater’s attitude
towards the rate, not on actual outcomes or behaviors. Sex, age, race and friendship biases
are examples of this type of error.

4. Primacy and Regency Effects: the rater’s ratings are heavily influenced either by
behavior exhibited by the rate during the early stages of the review period (primacy) or by
outcomes, or behavior exhibited by the rate near the end of the review period. For example, if
a salesperson captures an important contract/sale just before the completion of the appraisal,

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 the timing of the incident may inflate his or her standing, even though the overall
performance of the sales-person may not have been encouraging. Likewise, a blunder
committed just before the appraisal period may diminish chances of securing a favorable
rating even if the overall performance is good.
One way of guarding against such an error is to ask rater to consider the composite
performance of the rate and not to be influenced by one incident or one achievement. The
rater must also be aware of the tendency on the part of the tendency on the part of the rates to
improve odds in their favor or suppress weak points during the rating period.

5. Perceptual set: This occurs when the rater’s assessment is influenced by previously
held beliefs. If the supervisor, for example, has a belief that employees hailing from one
particular region are intelligent and hard working, his subsequent rating of an employee
hailing from that region tends to be favorably high.

6. Dimension Order Performance: Two r more dimensions on a performance

instrument follow or closely follow each other describe or rotate to a similar quality. The
rater rates the first dimension accurately and then rates the second dimension similar to the
first because of their proximity. If the dimensions had been arranged in a significantly
different order, the ratings might have been different.

7. Spillover Effect: This refers to allowing past performance appraisal ratings to

unjustifiably influence current ratings, past ratings, good or bad, result in similar rating for
the current period although the demonstrated behavior does not deserve the rating, good or
bad.

8. Status Effect: In refers to overrating of employees in higher-level job or jobs held in

high esteem, and underrating employees in lower-level job or jobs held in low esteem.

9. Others: There are other problems as well. One such is error of miss attribution. This
occurs when a complex problem I addressed by a simplistic solution, which does more harm
than good. In today’s workplace, managers tend to think in term of problems and solutions.
This may be helpful in approaching a situation but the consequence is the miss attribution of
problems and solutions.