Performance Appraisals

The Performance Of Performance Appraisal

Sanjeev Kumar Saxena - Jodhpur

Today, most of organisations attempt to develop the outlook and performance of its employees by using multiple and complex training and educational programmes. In comparison to this, several academician's, researches and professionals hold that the personality of employees is generally developed when they learn several dimensions of job while working. Similarly, it is also believed that proper development of the personality of an employee by exercising 'on the job' will be more useful when the organisation simultaneously gets related feed back through a systematic method of performance appraisal.

Performance appraisal is a process of obtaining, analysing and recording information about the relative worth of an employee. It is a systematic periodic and an impartial rating of an employee's excellence in matters pertaining to his present job and his potential for a better job. A good appraisal system provides right feedback about the quality of performance of an employee. In spite of dislike by several employees, performance appraisal has become an inescapable feature. It imparts benefits not only to the employees but also on supervisors and management. By viewing the benefits of performance appraisal, an attempt was made to find out from personnel managers, general manager and owners of 37 hotels of Rajasthan, the performance appraisal scenario in hospitality industry.

There are certain identified criteria for which performance appraisal is carried out in the hospitality industry that includes:

To check current performance

Know future potential

Maintain work force

Improve performance

Determining training needs

Personal development opportunity

Basis of promotion

Transfer and discharge

Basis of pay revision

Feedback and communication mechanism.

Appraiser

A well-designed performance appraisal system might fail to bring about the desired results, if an appropriate appraiser is not selected. In most of situations, it is been seen that the appraiser is an immediate supervisor of the people to be appraised. Therefore, an attempt was made to find out the people, who conduct the performance appraisal interview in selected hotel's units.

The above analysis (Table I) indicates that in more than 50 per cent of the five, four, three-star and heritage hotels, the performance appraisal is done by the immediate supervisor as he is most familiar with subordinates and their work, and he is considered to be the most able man to appraise them. Whereas in two hotels performance appraisal was mostly conducted by the personnel manager. In one and unapproved hotels, the concept of written performance appraisal system was not found, though they conduct performance appraisal but in an informal way.

Duration

The Indian corporate world undertakes various pattern of duration for conducting performance appraisal. An attempt was made to project the duration in which performance of employee is evaluated by selected hotels units. It is noticed that some hotels exclusively prefer to have a formal system of performance appraisal and the duration is either annually, half yearly, quarterly and some prefer to have an informal system of performance appraisal and the duration is either weekly, daily or continuously. It was also noticed that some hotels prefer to have the appraisal in both combinations.

Methodology

The corporate world had broadly classified the method of performance appraisal into two categories:

(a) Traditional Methods

(b) Modern Methods

Traditional methods include a confidential report, ranking method, essay or free form, paired comparison, forced distribution, checklist method, critical incident, group appraisal and field review method.

While the modern performance appraisal methods includes an appraisal by result or MBO, behaviourally anchored rating scale method. An attempt was therefore made to highlight the preference of performance appraisal methods in selected hotels:

The above analysis (Table II) significantly explains that the most common method of performance appraisal being used in selected hotels units is confidential report, as more than 50 per cent of all categories of hotels are using this method.

Today, the traditional confidential report method is widely used by immediate supervisors as a major determinant of subordinate's promotion and transfer. This report deals with the year work and general opinion of the later toward the employee. It has also been observed that 33 per cent and 14 per cent of five star and heritage hotel respectively also used appraisal by result modern method of performance appraisal because frequently feedback and supervisor subordinate interaction are the key factors of this method.

The superiors play supportive counselling and coaching roles. The employee is judged on the basis of the achievement of targets and not in term of operational methodology. Whereas 100 per cent of the one and unapproved hotels do not use any of the method of performance appraisal as they have informal system of performance appraisal.

Performance appraisal though very widely used an probably sound in theory but it presents a numbers of problems in actual practice. The obstacles which are noted quite common and more frequent during the research are:

Unskilled supervision

An ineffective form of performance appraisal, inadequate procedures, infrequent evaluation, fear of offending employees and unfairness, failure to follow up. Therefore, an ideal approach to performance appraisal is that, in which the evaluator is free from personal biases, prejudices and idiosyncrasies.

During the research following suggestion were also noted to make performance Appraisal system more effective.

(a) The employee should be aware of the performance in term of goals, targets, behaviour etc expected