Performance evaluation is a systematic process for assessing an employee's job performance and productivity. It involves establishing performance standards and then measuring actual performance against those standards in regular meetings between the employee and their supervisor. The goals of performance evaluations are to ensure quality of work, provide feedback to help employees improve, identify training needs, and determine compensation decisions like salary increases or promotions. However, evaluations can be flawed if raters let personal biases or recent events influence their ratings rather than considering an employee's overall performance throughout the entire review period.