Understanding the Employee Appraisal Strength and Weakness

Who doesn’t love getting an appreciation for their work? Am sure, there won’t be anyone. And when that appreciation is backed by an appraisal, it is simply icing on the cake. Today a major share of business organizations and management bench blindly believe that the employee appraisal is one of the most ideal and best ways to carry forward with- assessment or evaluation of the employee productivity, overall employee performance, and effectiveness of an organization. It is considered as one of the strategic tools for constant assessment of a worker, eventually improving employee morale.

However, employee appraisal has another side as well. The employee appraisal comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses directly impacting the business and workers within. It comes along with a lot of positive qualities and shortcomings that directly proportionate to business success and business loss.

• Therefore, if your company is into the practice of deploying the employee appraisal tactics, it is advocated that you understand and maintain the balance among its strength and weakness. 
• There is no doubt about the intention of practicing employee appraisal at the workplace. The major mission of implementing this technique is to judge and evaluate the employee's job performance via his or her superior or the manager. Generally, in most organizations today, the practice is carried more than once or twice a year. However, the organizations deploy diverse strategies, depending on their workflow and employee work culture. For example One of the most sought-after employee appraisal technique is the Management by Objectives Method. This is practiced across several industries, no matter how big or small they are. Here, the employee is accessed in terms of accomplishing the company objectives, say a comparison between certain standards and goals enshrined by the company for their employees. The employee’s actual performance is calculated here, in other words saying how far, or what percentage he succeeded in achieving the enshrined goals and objectives laid the company/ organization. 
• Secondly is the '360 Degree' method, in which the worker is assessed by everyone right from the superior, peers, subordinates, and even outside public like the stakeholders and clients.
• However, in spite of different and insightful strategies utilized by various business organizations for assessing the worker's job performance, the concept drew wide criticism from corporate and social experts. The experts are of the opinion that, if not conducted fairly, appraisal methods can significantly affect business growth and employee productivity. 
• This assessment is done by the boss or superiors based on some pre-chosen criteria and if done effectively and fair enough, it can help persuade a worker to do more, thereby improving his efficiency. 
• This article ponders both the sides of the coin, taking into account both the strength and weakness of appraisal tactics. 

Qualities / Strength of Performance Appraisals 

•  The act makes an assessment or comparison between the employee's actual performance over the expected performance. It perceives and rewards the potential workers, persuade them to do more in favor of the company. Based on merit, adequate perks, promotions, compensations can be offered to employees keeping them motivated and bound to resend for a longer run in the business.
•  An appraisal process gets you a premise for improving employee performance. It helps in recognizing the need for further training, preparation, and improvement for workers who fail to fulfill the set guidelines or objectives. This eventually lifts the spirit of workers, thereby ensuring profitability to the association. 
•  Through a performance evaluation act, the manager or boss can quickly recognize the qualities, shortcomings, work knowledge, abilities of a worker pertaining to completion of a task also his commitment towards fulfilling the mission. Also, the worker comes to know about his key work territories, and furthermore the regions where he needs to bring improvement and updating. The worker also gets a glimpse of the comprehension of the business organization’s needs and desires.
•  Assessments also help in perceiving the objectives and goals of a worker. Via the appraisal tactics and performance evaluation methods, the superiors get to tap the interests, aptitudes, and proficiencies of a work that might work more reasonable for some other activity in the association. This guarantees better utilizing the worker in future times for the concerned set of work. 
• Distinguishing individuals with the right set of abilities is the success mantra of any business solution, and performance evaluation is one such method that helps the business organization in accomplishing their enshrined central goals and targets. Here both the employee and business organization are benefitted in terms of development. 
• In simpler terms, the employee appraisal is a suitable apparatus for upholding and maintaining an open correspondence between the management and employee, improving the performance and profitability. 

Weakness/Shortcomings of Performance Appraisals 

Like the appraisal strength list, there exists a fair share of the list in terms of its weakness. The concept is censured on a ton of grounds. 

•  One of the major arguments or negatively portrayed in employee appraisal procedure is that the employees get affected in office politics if their superiors don’t cast their opinion reasonably or fairly. If the judgment made is on the basis of the superior’s personal liking and disliking rather than with respect to the employee’s genuine conduct, it is likely that the deserved gets exploited. They will be getting swayed between office politics, deprived of their rights and credits.
• Sometimes it is seen that the appraisal techniques deplorably fail in meeting the aim directed in any case. You might be thinking about how. In appraisal, the employee is accessed and judged by his management and his compensations say the promotions and perks get solely reliant on that. In this case, it is unlikely that the employee brings out the issues in his region of work while doing the self-evaluation, as he is finally getting what he really needs. 
• In some cases, the management also feels awkward and bad to judge their employee every often as they are working together. They get reluctant in judging their subordinates in fear of causing sour relationships in the work sector, ultimately giving space to confusion and an unproductive workplace.  

To conclude:

• Numerous management specialists who are against performance evaluations contend that examinations and motivating forces should be kept discrete. The opinion that the employee appraisal mode should be confined to the promotion of training, work execution, and vocation improvement of the employee. In no terms, it should be mixed along with the incentives or salary perks of the employee, as it may hamper the confidence of other employees in the business. 
• Also, the research conducted in this field denotes that the reward giving is a separate procedure and it should never be mixed with the performance evaluation framework, as it leads to disappointment and a sense of loss among the workers. 
• Thus subsequently, taking note of the qualities and shortcomings of the employee appraisal, it tends to be presumed that, there exists a fair share of strength and weakness to the concept that directly impacts the business. However, it is indeed a robust motivational tool for the business organization to keep its employees valued and worthy. 
• However, managing the employee appraisal manually is impossible if the organization is large in size. In this case, human resource management software comes into play. It comes along with the different set of functions like recruitment management, attendance and timesheet management, custody management, payroll management also employee Appraisal Management helping the managers and superiors to keenly focus on the evaluation of their employee job performance thereby generating a fair system for calculating their pay and promotions.

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