Job Performance Appraisal

To ensure the integrity of the job performance appraisal, leaders should rate their employees in an unbiased and impartial manner. However, this is easier said than done. Like most leaders, you will find that when appraising your employees you can be influenced by your memories and natural biases. This can happen because you are human.

If you are aware of any possible biases that you may have you can eliminate or at least reduce the impact of these biases on your rating, resulting in your employees receiving a fairer job performance appraisal.

The 6 key rating errors or biases commonly associated with completing a job performance appraisal that you will need to be aware of are 

• The halo effect
• Contrast errors
• Recency Effect
• Leniency Bias
• Severity Bias
• Self Serving Bias

Now let’s look at each in more detail 

The Halo Effect

The halo effect is the tendency of the leader to judge all aspects of an individual using a general impression that was formed on only one or a few of the individual’s characteristics. 

An example might be a leader who observes an employee providing excellent service to a customer and then leader uses this positive view of the employee to assess other areas of the employee’s performance favourably.

Equally it could go the other way. For example if the leader formed an early negative view of the employee’s customer service capabilities may then assess other areas of the employee’s performance negatively.

To avoid the halo effect
When completing job performance appraisal, leaders should collect sufficient data to make realistic judgements in all areas of the employee’s performance.

Contrast Errors

The contrast error occurs when a leader compares subordinates with one another instead of against performance standards. This may result in an average employee being rated as a high performer when compared to their underperforming peers, or a good performer can be rated as a poor performer when compared to their high performing peers.

You will find this is more likely to occur when using forced rating systems, where each team is required to have an equal number of high, middle and low performers. In a high performing team those rated as low performers maybe better than the middle and high performers in a poor performing team.

Even with forced rating, you need to be open to the possibility that your bottom performers are sill good performers, or that your top performers may still not be good performers.

Some measurement systems eliminate the use of performance standards and deliberately compare all employees doing the same task, which results in some employees being above average and other being below average.

These measurement systems tend to compare all employees across all teams who complete the same tasks. Thus eliminating the inter team contrast error described above.

Recency Bias

The recency bias occurs where a leader assigns ratings based only on the employee’s most recent performance rather than the employee’s performance over the entire period being rated.

To reduce the risk of this error you should ideally review your one-on-one notes throughout the whole year or rating period to ensure an objective rating.

Leniency Bias

The leniency bias occurs where a leader is too soft or too generous when rating the employee’s performance.  This is often due to manager discomfort with giving an honest rating.

To counter the risk of leniency you can

• Run your performance rating past a Human Resource Manager or your manager for comment before your performance appraisal interviews commence, or

• Compare you team with another team doing the same work and verify that your ratings are consistent

Severity Bias

The severity bias occurs when a leader is too hard or harsh when rating their employee’s performance.

You can counter the severity bias the same way that you can counter the leniency bias.

Self-Serving Bias

The self serving bias occurs when the leader tends to perceive that they were personally responsible for success and others were responsible for failure.  With the self serving bias a leader will perceive that a high performing team member has succeeded due to the leader’s great leadership, however a poor performing team member is the result of poor training or poor coaching and has little to do with the leader’s leadership.

Examples, Templates, How to Guide, it's all here

• Appraisal Home Page

Phase 1

• Rating methods
• Establishing performance standards

Phase 2

• Measuring results
• Rating Errors
• Prepare for your appraisal interview

Phase 3

• The performance interview
• After the performance interview

Process Map

Tips & Techniques

Free Templates

• Rating Scale
• Essay Style
• MBO
• BARS
• Download

Appraisal PowerPoint Presentation

Examples

• Good Performer
• Average Performer
• Poor Performer
• Intangible Measure

When completing job performance appraisals it is hard to completely eliminate your rating bias, however if you are aware of possible rating biases that may influence your employee appraisals you are more likely to avoid a biased employee rating.

In larger organisations where there are many teams completing simular work the team leaders can participate in rating calibration sessions, where leaders from across the business each rate several employees and compare and discuss their rating scores.  Using this process, employee ratings across the business should become more consistent.

Other techniques to minimise bias include

Next Steps

For best results, you need to be prepared for your Job performance appraisal interviews, you will find that many managers forget one or more of these critical preparation steps, click here for a preperation checklist.