Question: Performance Appraisals

A good place to start to evaluate actual performance is to look to the performance appraisal to determine if and by how much an employee's performance deviates from expected performance; this would have been confirmed by our earlier job-task analysis.

Many types of performance appraisal instruments exist. If you type "performance appraisal forms" in Google, you will get well over 174,000hits. Today's organizations tend to use some standard performance appraisal instruments. Here is a sample listing, with brief descriptionsfrom Murphy and Cleveland (1995):

• Critical incidents. The supervisor's attention is focused on specific or critical behaviors that separate effective from ineffectiveperformance.

• Graphic rating scale. This method lists a set of performance factors, such as job knowledge, work quality, and cooperation; thesupervisor uses these to rate employee performance using an incremental scale.

• Behaviorally anchored rating scales. These combine elements from critical incident and graphic rating scale approaches. Thissupervisor rates employees according to items on a numerical scale.

• Management by objectives. These evaluate how well an employee has accomplished objectives determined to be critical in jobperformance.

• 360-degree feedback. This multisource feedback method provides a comprehensive perspective of employee performance by usingfeedback from the full circle of people with whom the employee interacts: supervisors, subordinates, and coworkers. It is effective forcareer coaching and identifying strengths and weaknesses.

Regardless of the actual performance appraisal tool used, what is clear is that the performance appraisal should appraise the actual behaviorsof the expected performance. That is, you must ensure that the instrument captures all the tasks and duties necessary to make a judgment onthe quality of the employee's performance. Unfortunately, this is not always the case; a good example of the performance appraisalinstrument not being properly aligned with the actual job duties required was found in my study of certified diabetes educators (CDEs). (Seethe HRD in Practice feature box titled "Effective CDE or Ineffective CDE?")Chapter Three of the textbook gives a basic description of five performance appraisal instruments. Choose one of the instruments, and write a two- to three-page paper (excluding the title and reference pages), describing the instrument. Include the following in your paper:

1) Provide a rationale for your choice of the performance appraisal instrument.

2) Analyze the advantages of the instrument.

3) Analyze the disadvantages of the instrument.

4) Illustrate how the appraisal helps with the ADDIE model (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate).

Your paper must include in-text citations and references from at least two scholarly sources, excluding the textbook, and be formatted according to APA guidelines outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.