Editing Performance appraisal (section)

==Rater errors==

Mistakes made by raters is a major source of problems in performance appraisal. There is no simple way to eliminate these errors, but making raters aware of them through training is helpful. Rater errors are based on the feelings and it has consequences at the time of appraisal.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Lotich |first1=Patricia |title=6 Errors Managers Make on Performance Appraisals |url=https://smartchurchmanagement.com/performance-appraisal-rater-errors/ |website=Smart Church Management |date=21 April 2020 }}{{unreliable source?|date=September 2024}}</ref>{{sfn|Mathis|Jackson|2003|p={{page needed|date=September 2024}}}}

'''Varying standards'''
:*Problem: When a manager appraises (evaluates) his or her employees and the manager uses different standards and expectations for employees who are performing similar jobs.{{citation needed|date=January 2015}}
:*Example: A professor does not grade the exams of all students in the same standards, sometimes it depends on the affection that the professor has towards others. This affection will make professor give students higher or lower grades.
:*Solution: The rater must use the same standards and weights for every employee. The manager should be able to show coherent arguments in order to explain the difference. Therefore, it would be easier to know if it is done, because the employee has provided a good performance, or if it because the manager perception is distorted.

'''[[Recency effect]]s'''
:*Problem: When the manager rates an individual above what the performance actually merits due to only considering the very latest performance and not taking into consideration a sufficient period for quality assessment.
:*Example: When a professor gives the course grade based just in the performance of the student only in the last week.
:*Solution: In order to avoid that, the manager can employ methods that track dominant traits as well as minor traits to understand adaptation over time.  Total strength can be understood as the sum of the relative strengths.

'''[[Primacy effect]]s''' 
:*Problem: When the person who evaluates gives more weight according to information the manager has received first.
:*Example: During an evaluation the manager gives a higher score due to the initial impressions the employee made during their first few weeks, and is overlooking recent performance issues. 
:*Solution: When the manager has to make a decision, it is better not to do it according to what he or she remembers, but should be based on all the relevant and documented data of the employees performance.
'''Central tendency'''
:*Problem: When the manager evaluates every employee within a narrow range, as the average because he or she is dismissing the differences in the performance that employees have done.
:*Example: When a professor because the average of the class tends to grade harder. Therefore, if the performance of the class average is quite high, the professor will evaluate them more highly. On the contrary, if the average of the class is lower, he or she would appraise lower.
'''Leniency'''
:*Problem: Rating of all employees are at the high end of the scale.
:*Example: When the professor tends to grade harder, because the average of the class.
'''Strictness'''
:*Problem: When a manager uses only the lower part of the scale to rate employees.
:*Example: When the professor tends to grade lower, because the average of the class.
:*Solution: try to focus more on the individual performance of every employee regardless the average results.
'''Rater bias'''<ref>{{cite web |title=Common Rater Errors |url=https://www.dartmouth.edu/hr/professional_development/for_managers/performance_management/common_rater_errors.php |website=Dartmouth Human Resources |date=3 August 2022 }}</ref>
:*Problem: Rater's when the manager rates according to their values and prejudices which at the same time distort the rating. Those differentiations can be made due to the ethnic group, gender, age, religion, sexuality or appearance of the employee.
:*Example: Sometimes happen that a manager treats someone different, because they think that the employee is [[homosexuality|homosexual]].
:*Solution: If then, the examination is done by higher-level managers, this kind of appraising can be corrected, because they are supposed to be more impartial. 
'''[[Halo effect]]''' 
:*Problem: When a manager rates an employee high on all items because of one characteristic they like.
:*Example: If a worker has few absences but the supervisor has a good relationship with that employee, the supervisor might give to the employee a high rating in all other areas of work, in order to balance the rating. Sometimes it happens due to the emotional dependability based on the good relationship they have.
:*Solution: Training raters to recognize the problem and differentiating the person with the performance they do. 
'''[[Horn effect]]''' 
:*Problem: This is the opposite to the halo effect and horns effect occurs when a manager rates an employee low on all items because of one characteristic that he or she dislikes.
:*Example: If a worker performs well but at certain times loves telling jokes, but the supervisor dislikes jokes, the supervisor might give the employee a lower rating in all other areas of work. Sometimes it happens when they do not have a close relationship and manager does not like the employee.
:*Solution: Is the same as in the halo effect. Training raters to recognize the problem and differentiating the person with the performance they provide.
'''Contrast''' 
:*Problem: The tendency to rate people relative to other people rather than to the individual performance. 
:*Example: At school, if you are sat down where all the chatty people are and you are silent but you do not pay attention and you do not do your homework, because you are drawing; when teacher gets angry with the group, you might be excluded of the bad behavior they have just because you are silent; but not because you are doing a good performance. Therefore, according to the group, you are not that chatty, but you are either doing the proper performance. However the rater will only get the idea that your behavior is not as bad as other, thus, you will be rate higher.
:*Solution: The rating should reflect the task requirement performance, not according to other people attitude.
'''Similar-to-me / Different-from-me'''
:*Problem: Sometimes, raters are influenced by some of the characteristics that people show. Depending if those characteristics are similar or different to the evaluators, they would be evaluated differently. 
:*Example: A manager with higher education degree might give subordinates with higher education degree a higher appraisal than those with only bachelor's degrees.
:*Solution: Try to focus on the performance the employee is doing regardless the common characteristic that you have
'''Sampling'''
:*Problem: When the rater evaluates the performance of an employee relying only on a small percentage of the amount of work done. 
:*Example: An employee has to do 100 reports. Then, the manager takes five of them to check how has the work been done, and the manager finds mistakes in those five reports. Therefore the manager will appraise the work of the employee as a "poor" one, without having into account the other 95 reports that the manager has not seen, that have been made correctly. 
:*Solution: To follow the entire track of the performance, not just a little part of it.
It is difficult to minimize rater errors, since humans are not objective. Moreover, sometimes, managers are not aware of having preferences towards people, but there are tools to have more objective information, such as using available technology to track performances and record it.

Consultant [[Marcus Buckingham]] and executive Ashley Goodall, reporting on a large-scale Deloitte performance management survey on ''Harvard Business Review'', said, contrary to the assumptions underlying performance rating, the rating mainly measured the unique rating tendencies of the rater and thus reveals more about the rater than about the person who is rated. They referred to this as the ''idiosyncratic rater effect''. In view of this effect, they advocate a radically different approach to performance management. In their scenario, 360-degree feedback and similar time-intensive exercises are replaced by team leaders' "performance snapshots" that focus on what they would ''do'' with each team member rather than what they ''think'' of that individual, and yearly appraisals of past performance are replaced by weekly check-ins among team leader and team member, preferably initiated by the team member, that focus on current and upcoming work.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Buckingham |first1=Marcus |last2=Goodall |first2=Ashley |title=Reinventing performance management |journal=Harvard Business Review |date=2015 |volume=93 |issue=4 |pages=15 |url=https://hbr.org/2015/04/reinventing-performance-management }}</ref>