Courtnie Taylor proposes a new performance appraisal approach to address issues with the current system. The current approach allows for bias through "halo errors" and "horn errors" that distort employee evaluations. Taylor suggests mandatory manager training on conducting accurate reviews and switching to behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS). BARS focuses on observable behaviors and examples, providing specific feedback to eliminate bias and more fairly assess employee performance. This new approach will help improve the accuracy and validity of performance evaluations.

1. Memo
To: Andrea McCourt, Director of Human Resources
From: Courtnie Taylor, Human Resources Business Partner
Date: April 16, 2016
Subject: New Performance Appraisal Approach
Performance appraisals are useful tools that are used to make decisions about an employee
both administrative and developmental in nature. Unfortunately, the current evaluation approach
allows for office politics to distort appraisals so they become less accurate. This memo is to
suggest a new performance appraisal approach that should decrease these occurrences.
The current performance review approach allows for managers to distort the employee’s actual
performance to achieve a hidden agenda. Many managers commit a halo error when evaluating
employees by letting their overall positive view of an employee’s performance bias their ratings.
On the other hand managers can commit a horn error when his overall negative view of an
employee bias his ratings.
It is important that performance management is both reliable and valid. It has come to my
attention that managers inflate and deflate their performance appraisals in many different ways.
Some examples of inflation bias can include: raising appraisals of good employees to keep up
performance, raising appraisals of low performing employees to increase performance as
motivation. On the other hand, managers have been known to deflate appraisals for many
reasons including: lowering ratings in order to encourage a low performer to find another job,
and lowering appraisals to motivate low performers to do better.
In order to eliminate these biases I propose the company should institute a new performance
appraisal policy. The first phase of the policy will be to send every manager to a mandatory
performance management training course. The purpose of this course will be to train managers
on the importance of accurate performance reviews and to teach every manager how to give
accurate and useful reviews. The second phase of the new appraisal policy will be to change
how the company does performance reviews. I propose that we get rid of the old graphic rating
scales of performance management and switch to behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS).
Establishing a new performance appraisal policy for the company will have many benefits.
According to Human Resource Management: Managing Employees for Competitive Advantage
by Lepak and Gowan, the behaviorally anchored rating scales have many advantages over the
current graphic rating scales. The specific nature of this approach and the use of observations
to support behaviors allows for better feedback that will help improve the performance of
employees.
The behaviorally anchored rating scales has many advantages over the graphic rating scales
we are currently using. According to Human Resource Management: Managing Employees for
Competitive Advantage by Lepak and Gowan one advantage is it focuses on specific and

2. observable behaviors. Because of this managers must provide examples of times they have
observed the employee demonstrating these behaviors in their job. The specific nature of the
approach gives raters a frame of reference for evaluating each dimension of performance. This
provides specific comments on all areas of job performance and will help to eliminate bias with
fairer and more accurate assessments of employee performance.
Another advantage of the BARS approach is that it gives very clear feedback. By providing
examples, employees are able to look at their performance and gather useful criticism that can
help them improve their job performance. One scenario for this could be that an employee
believes they are doing their job accurately and efficiently, but after a BARS performance review
a manager reveals that during the review the employee could have done the same job bit in a
more efficient way. Because the manager was actively watching the employee they were able to
meet and come up with a better way to do the job.
By establishing a new performance appraisal policy we can eliminate bias and inaccuracy in
employee reviews. In changing to the BARS approach we can eliminate the distortions that
managers can put in the current graphic rating scales and provide a more accurate performance
review. This can be accomplished by sending managers to training classes to ensure they learn
the importance of accurate reviews and how to institute this.