Dynamics of a Performance Management System

By, Manash K Baruah

Today, in the time of massive staff reductions, reengineering and continuous improvement efforts, the evaluation of employee work behavior has become an important function. Throughout your career, your performance will be monitored and appraised and your level of salary, rank and responsibility will depend on how well you satisfy the established criteria for job performance. Performance appraisal: the periodic, formal evaluation of employee performance. Performance appraisal can be as beneficial to you as to your company > it shows where you stand, where you need improvement and it helps you assess your competence and personal development on the job. Performance appraisal and fair employment practices Performance appraisal procedures must be validated like tests or any other selection device. It is more difficult for a company to be challenged in court for discrimination, if its performance appraisal programs include formal appraisal interviews, formal job analyses and written instructions to the appraisers, and allow employees to review the results. Racial Bias

Most performance evaluation programs are based on supervisor ratings, which are subjective human judgments that can be influenced by personal factors and prejudices. Race discrimination is known to persist in job assignment, pay, promotion and other personnel decisions. E.g. an analysis of ratings given by 20,000 supervisors showed that both black and white supervisors gave higher ratings to subordinates of their own race (Mount, Sytsma, Hazucha & Holt, 1997). Other studies have shown that black employees receive lower performance appraisals than white workers from both white and black raters. But I/O psychologists who examined employment data from 21,000 workers in 10 major job categories concluded that the lower performance ratings assigned to blacks may reflect their somewhat lower job-related ability and experience levels. Since the ability and experience measures were all related to job performance, the supervisors may be accurately representing performance differences between black and white workers.