What are the errors in Performance Appraisal Process ?

1. Central Tendency Error

   • Some supervisors tend to rank all employees at about average, regardless of an employee’s performance. A supervisor who believes in never rating an employee as excellent is demonstrating central tendency error.

   Contrast Error

   • Supervisors who rate subordinates as they compare against each other rather than how they compare against the performance standards commit contrast error. This error can cause an employee who is performing average against performance standards to rate high because his peers are under performing.

   False Attribution

   • False attribution is the tendency to attribute bad performance to internal causes and good performance to external causes. In other words, if an employee performs well, it’s because the employee had help, such as a good leader; and if the employee performs badly, it’s because the employee did something wrong, such as procrastinate.

   Halo Effect

   • The halo effect is when a supervisor forms a positive impression of an employee's skill in one area and then gives her high ratings across all rating criteria. Humans tend to view some traits as more important than other traits. When a supervisor rates employees with the traits that he deems more important higher in all rating areas than employees who do not possess those traits, the supervisor is committing the halo effect error.

   Leniency Error

   • Leniency error is the tendency of a supervisor to rate an employee higher than what his performance warrants. Reasons that a supervisor might do this could include avoiding confrontations, or feeling that by giving the employee a high rating, he will work harder to live up to the rating.

   Perceived Meaning

   • Perceived meaning becomes an issue when appraisers do not agree on the meaning of the rating criteria. For example, one supervisor may perceive an employee’s constant reporting of problems as initiative, while another supervisor may feel this behavior demonstrates dependence on supervisory assistance instead of initiative.

   Recency Error

   • Recency error happens when a supervisor uses recent events to rate the employee. This usually occurs due to a lack of documentation of the employee’s performance over the course of the entire performance appraisal period. An employee who performed highly over the course of the appraisal period may be rated low if the most recent events where negative.

   Severity Error

   • Severity error is the opposite of leniency error. In severity error, a supervisor tends to rate an employee lower than what her performance warrants. A potential cause of the error could be the use of unrealistic standards of comparison, such as the supervisor rating a new employee against himself. In this scenario, the supervisor forgets that it took time to reach the level of performance he operates at, and a new employee would not have had enough time to develop to that level.

   Stereotyping

   • Stereotyping is the tendency to apply the same generalizations to all members of specific social groups. One of the more common types of stereotyping that occur in the workplace is gender stereotyping. Research conducted by Madeline Heilman, a professor of psychology at NYU, suggests that women are often evaluated more negatively than men, even when both are trained to do a job the same way.

• Lenience error

-          appraisal may be affected by evaluators own value

-          evaluators may be positively or negatively

-          due to their own values officers over rated or under rated

• Halo error

-          evaluation based on some good or bad traits of a person

-          partial in nature

• Similarity error

-          aggressive like aggressive, an extroverts like another extroverts

-          evaluating employees based on the way and evaluator perceives himself/herself

• Central Tendency

-          No ability to rate extreme high /low

-          Tendency to rate average marks always

• Inappropriate Substitutes for performance

-          Jobs may not be substituted by other jobs

-          Capacity may be important for teaching but not relevance to judicial works

• Attribution Theory

-          if fails because of internal control – rating low

-          if fails because of external control – rating may not be low

• Low appraiser motivation

- if the evaluator knows the poor appraisal could hurt the employees future particular opportunities for promotion or a salary increase- the evaluator may be reluctant to give a realistic appraisal