The term performance appraisal in business typically refers to a review of a single employee, usually in conjunction with a year-end evaluation, according to the Academy to Innovate HR. These reviews help managers determine where employees are excelling and where they might need to improve.
In addition to helping managers evaluate subordinates, performance appraisals also help employees learn where they are doing well and where the company thinks they need to improve. Performance appraisals are also important for deciding whether a company will keep an employee, give them a promotion or give a staff member a raise or bonus.
Performance appraisal means evaluating an employee’s current and/or past performance relative to his or her performance standards. It is designed to help employees understand their roles, objectives, expectations and performance success. Appraising performance assumes that performance standards have been set and feedback is given to the employees to help them eliminate performance deficiencies or continue to perform above par. It is an integrated process of setting goals, training and developing employees, appraising their performance and rewarding them.
In addition to individual, annual or semi-annual general performance reviews, companies can create performance appraisals for departments, teams, projects or individual performance during a project. Some performance appraisals begin with an employee using a series of questions to evaluate himself so the company can get the worker’s perspective. This helps managers find out the information they aren’t aware of, such as an employee not having the right software program for a task or one who needs training for a job they were not originally hired to do.
Advantages
Time
An electronic performance appraisal system saves time in several ways. One is the ability for the employee and manager to fill in their portions of the evaluation when they can, as opposed to scheduling a meeting to discuss the evaluation. Another way is that an electronic evaluation system can collect metric data throughout the year and use a formula created by the human resources department to come up with a performance evaluation number. This can all be done instantly without the manager needing to take time to compile reports.
Electronic Appraisals Leave a Trail
Electronic employee appraisals provide proof that the company gave staff members specific information on their jobs, including specific expectations going forward. This can help an employer in the event of a wrongful termination lawsuit. Employees can also refer to them throughout the year to make sure their performance is on track. A downside to electronic appraisals is that employees can use them in potential lawsuits.
Electronic Appraisals Provide Better Data
Using electronic performance appraisals allows a company to enter the data into a database to look for patterns, comparisons and other information. This is true only if the reviews use objective answers, such as true/false or a scale of 1 to 10-type answers.
One of the basic purposes of e performance appraisals is to help a company spot problems in a particular department or find issues that run across all departments. They can help identify which managers might be the most out of touch with their employees’ perceptions of their performances.
Workflow
An electronic appraisal system can be used to make sure that all appraisals are seen by the appropriate parties. That increases the efficiency of the workflow appraisals. Instead of a stack of appraisals sitting on a manager’s desk waiting for review, they can be part of a file that the manager can review at leisure. Once the immediate manager is done with the appraisals, they move on to the next person who needs to see them. This helps to improve the time to get employees raises and put promotions into effect.
Disadvantages
Not much can be said about the disadvantages of online assessments, since the advantages outweigh them by far. But there might be some, for example, you need to be computer literate (or able to use a computer well) in order to create and take an assessment. Technology is not always reliable, there might be connection or internet problems, energy breaks and other things like that. Also, there’s a cost involved in online assessment software.