Emotional Bias and Appraisal Errors

Perhaps the biggest problem in getting good ratings stems from an emotional bias of the rates. They need to be informed of this possibility in detail and trained to avoid such feelings. Some of the sources of emotional bias are:

Feelings of the rater concerning his inadequacy to make appraisals arising from:

• Insufficient knowledge about rating procedures
• Insufficient knowledge about some or all the raters
• Inability to rate an employee on some of the rating factors/ attributes
• The burdensome nature of detailed rating if a large number of employees must be evaluated.
• Lack of time in which to make necessary appraisals.

Feeling of doubt concerning the fairness and accuracy of the rating method arising from:

• Omission from the rating of attributes which the rater considers important or inclusion of attributes which he considers unimportant
• Disagreement with the authors of scale as to the weighting which item should receive
• Lack of knowledge as to the consequences of his rating as a rater as and when choosing ad certain place as ‘most typical’ or ‘least typical’ of ratee’s behaviour
• Expectation of an overriding review of his ratings by a superiors he considers less well acquainted with the rater’s qualifications and performance
• Evidence that somebody is endeavoring to influence his rating of certain- employees.

Feelings of suspicion about what may happen to him as a result of the rating arising from

• Suspicion or knowledge that his superiors will see his ratings and will not agree with some of them.
• Suspicion of unpleasant interview with certain disappointment employees.
• The possibility that management may use his ratings as a criterion of his effectiveness as a manager.
• Uneasiness regarding possible personal competition from certain employees/managers who may be prompted to managerial jobs, in his organisation/ department of their ratings is high.

Feeling of concern for what may happen to his people as a result of the ratings, arising from

• Fear that certain employees for whom he feels special sympathy may loose their jobs or status of their ratings is low.
• Knowledge that his superior are endeavoring to build up a case to support some sort of re-communication or action regarding one or more employees.

Appraisal Errors

There are a number of common mistakes supervisors make when they fill out performance appraisals, most of them being the sorts of mistakes we all make when we misjudge friends and acquaintances.

• Halo Effect- there is a natural tendency for rater to be influenced in rating one factor by the rating they give on another. If the manager has a general impression that a subordinate is good, he will rate him high on all factors. On his rating on first factor listed on the factor he thinks most important may contaminate his ratings on all others. Due to this the error is also called as ‘constant error’. The halo effect can also work in reverse. If a man strikes us an unpleasant, we may assume he is an inefficient worker. One way to reduce the halo effect is to rate all the subordinates on a single item before going on to the next, rather than rating one subordinate at a time.

• Job Influence – performance rating, as the name suggests, is designed to evaluate how well an individual does on a particular job. Although in theory performance rating is vastly different from job evaluation, in practice it is common to give managers on higher- paid jobs higher ratings just because of their position.

• Central Tendency- when central tendency prevails the survivors completes all the forms in about the same way for all the employees under him and all the employees come out about average. In his effort to be fair, he does not discriminate among different workers or among the different areas of performance of an individual.

• Recency- supervisors have a tendency to judge an employee’s performance for the last year on his actions within the week just before the appraisal. The good or bad incident of the last week is fresh in mind; the achievements or failures of a year ago are forgotten. Nevertheless, the performance appraisal is a rating for an entire period. The critical incident technique can help overcome this over emphasis on recent behaviour.

• Poor Performance Standards- Too often the objectives are not clear to either the employee or manager, or both. Sometimes manager sets standards without input from the employees. Sometimes managers hands a list to the employees without clarification. All these leads to confusion and setting poor performance standards.

• Insufficient Time- Although we all know that a great deal rests on appraisals, many managers don’t give enough time to the process. They rush through the paperwork thus turning writing performance appraisal and therefore performance management as a mere formality. As a result, employees don’t feel the need to change their behaviour. Doing good appraisal demands thought concentration, and many hours spent over the course of the year. But it really pages off in improved performance and fewer management headaches.

• Lack of or Poor Documentation- documenting a worker’s performance is important all times to support an evaluation. It is essential if you are criticizing that performance. The employee is unlikely to accept your evaluation unless you

can refer to specific incidents and cite what happened, when it happened, and the consequences of the event. Your written records will serve to remind everyone what happened and when. Remember, good documentation can justify poor evaluations, and while a few of your employees may be deaf to negative feedback, continuous communication with your workers ensures that most know where you stand about their work.

• Excessive Leniency or strictness- Some managers rate everybody high, others are very strict and still others play it safe by sticking to the middle. Rating tend to be higher if the manager knows they will be revealed to subordinates. Managers often hesitate to give low ratings for fear of antagonizing their subordinate and making them less cooperative. Further more superiors fear that low rating will reflect on their own abilities. There is always the chance that their boss will say, “if your subordinate is as bad as all this, why don’t you do something about it? Some executive regularly rate new employees very low, and gradually raise them- thus making the employees feel good and displaying to their superiors their skill as trainers.