The Process of an Employee Performance Appraisal. Its aims, functions and methods

Academic Paper from the year 2020 in the subject Leadership and Human Resource Management - Leadership, grade: 1,4, Mendel University, course: PEFNet2020, language: English, abstract: This term paper is about the process of employee performance appraisals. To this purpose, the author starts with the disambiguation of essential terms and definitions, as well as with the explanation of employee performance appraisal aims and functions. Subsequently, the process of an employee performance appraisal is discussed, as well as the different appraisal methods. Finally, potential sources of error and possible biases are analysed. Nobody is beyond jumping to conclusions, thus often adjudicating wrongly. Whenever people meet, regardless of private or professional context, they use to assess, to adjudicate or to condemn. In order to make the evaluation of another person less difficult, people use to lapse into clichés and stereotypes. In spite of all efforts to evaluate the employee´s performance in a fair, objective and factual way, performance appraisals always represent a subjective act, which is affected by numerous factors. Employee performance appraisals are supposed to clarify whether the respective employee is able to meet the employer´s demands. In case an employee is hired on the basis of misjudgement or rating errors, or if someone is employed for an inappropriate position, this can result in considerable costs (increased requirements during the familiarisation phase, loss of sales and profits or even loss of clients), i.e. consequential costs (searching for a new employee, re-establishing a good reputation). Inappropriate employees will not provide the expected benefit. Moreover, if the worse comes the worse, they could even damage the employer´s organisation/company. However, the recording of the employees´ strengths and weaknesses does not only serve as a record of results, professional conduct and potentials in order to provide the best possible employment, but also as the basis for the definition of an adequate salary Performance appraisals can result in - positive or negative - personnel measures. Hence, the employee performance appraisal represents an essential leadership task of any executive.