The document discusses methods and tips for conducting positive performance appraisals to enhance employee motivation and engagement. It emphasizes the importance of preparing objective evaluations, focusing on improvement rather than criticism, and setting achievable goals. Various performance appraisal methods are also outlined, highlighting their advantages and limitations to ensure a constructive review process.

1. Positive performance appraisal
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I. Contents of getting positive performance appraisal
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Have you ever left a performance review discussion feeling more engaged, inspired, and
motivated? If you have, you understand that performance reviews can drive positive change and
feelings, if done right. The trouble is that most managers don’t know how to facilitate these
positive changes within the context of a performance review discussion.
All too often, performance reviews can be a negative experience for employees and managers
alike, dreaded by some, avoided by others, and feared by even the best of performers. Managers
often dislike providing performance feedback to their employees, and employees don’t like
receiving it. Who can blame them? When the process is focused on judging, rating, and
criticizing, as it is traditionally, it can lose its purpose and become a negative experience for
everyone involved.
The performance review process doesn’t need to be perceived this way. It can be a time of re-
engaging and re-directing employees towards greater success in the next year and affirming your
support for their performance and development, while still meeting your administrative needs
(i.e. merit increases, performance documentation, etc.).
Changing the perceptions of the process starts with changing the experience. Here are a few
suggestions for your managers to create a more positive performance review experience.
Prepare and be objective.

2. Throughout the year, it’s important to collect information about your employees, including their
specific accomplishments, performance problems, progress in their development, and current
skills. This information will help you form a more objective evaluation of your employee. For
example, every time your employee does something well, goes to a training, develops a new
skill, has a performance issue, or goes above and beyond their duties, log the behavior, result,
and cause (if known) in a diary for future reference. This will make completing your employee’s
performance review much easier and accurate. Nothing is more frustrating to an employee than a
manager who doesn’t have all of his/her facts straight or evaluates them too subjectively.
Deemphasize ratings.
Ratings can serve a purpose in the performance review process, but the focus of a performance
review discussion should not be where the employee fell on the Likert scale or how the employee
ranks compared to other employees. Employees can often get caught up in how they were rated
and miss the bigger picture of the conversation. The performance discussion can quickly become
an argument about differing opinions on ratings and this isn’t productive for either party.
Additionally, remember that a manager’s core purpose in the performance management process
isn’t to judge, but rather coach to improve performance.
Uncover causes of high performance.
A fair performance review should uncover an employee’s areas of high performance throughout
the year and the causes of why the employee performed well on those tasks or projects. By
identifying an employee’s successes and reasons for their success, you can better understand the
factors that lead an employee to perform well, and maximize these factors in the future by
recreating conditions that facilitate great performance.
Focus on improvement.
Another core purpose of a performance review is to improve performance. This rarely happens
just by criticizing the employee and telling them what they need to improve. In fact, you’ll often
find that employees don’t know where to start to improve, so there needs to be additional work,
help, coaching, and development to close the performance gap that exists and to enhance and
broaden skills. The performance review discussion should explore ways to close those gaps and
expand skill sets, and discuss barriers to employees’ success as well as how those can be bridged
or alleviated.
Suggest ways employees can learn and develop.
Explore learning and training opportunities and look for ways to align development with
employees’ preferred learning styles. For example, some employees respond better to reading
material, attending workshops, mentoring, or on-the-job training. The key is to find and suggest
effective ways that employees like to learn and use these to encourage skill development. Map

3. out a few learning objectives to ensure that employees are held accountable for building their
skills.
Set goals and objectives.
A final step that’s beneficial at the end of a performance review discussion is goal setting.
Setting goals towards the end of the conversation helps close the conversation on a motivational
note, and get employees excited about new objectives and projects. Goals can strengthen
performance and improve skills, and can be helpful in motivating employees to work towards
new objectives. Ideally, employees should have input into what these goals are, versus just being
arbitrarily assigned objectives.
Close with support.
Finally, it’s important to end a performance review discussion supportively. Express confidence
in the employee’s abilities and let them know that you are there to support their success
throughout the next year as they work towards their goals. Emphasize what they are doing right,
what they can improve upon, and how you’ll help them. Cite specific ways that you will do this,
and if possible, create a written action plan. Then, be sure to deliver on those promises. Even
when an employee has much to work on, having the support and confidence of their manager can
make all the difference between a negative or positive reaction to the discussion and feeling
motivated to change their behavior.
This year, make it a goal to have each and every one of your employees leave their performance
review discussion motivated and inspired. You may discover that these discussions aren’t so bad
after all, and create a more engaged team that’s ready to deliver great results in 2012.
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III. Performance appraisal methods
1.Ranking Method
The ranking system requires the rater to rank his
subordinates on overall performance. This consists in
simply putting a man in a rank order. Under this method,
the ranking of an employee in a work group is done
against that of another employee. The relative position of
each employee is tested in terms of his numerical rank. It
may also be done by ranking a person on his job
performance against another member of the competitive
group.
Advantages of Ranking Method
i. Employees are ranked according to their performance

4. levels.
ii. It is easier to rank the best and the worst employee.
Limitations of Ranking Method
i. The “whole man” is compared with another “whole man”
in this method. In practice, it is very difficult to compare
individuals possessing various individual traits.
ii. This method speaks only of the position where an
employee stands in his group. It does not test anything
about how much better or how much worse an employee
is when compared to another employee.
iii. When a large number of employees are working, ranking
of individuals become a difficult issue.
iv. There is no systematic procedure for ranking individuals
in the organization. The ranking system does not eliminate
the possibility of snap judgements.
2. Rating Scale
Rating scales consists of several numerical scales
representing job related performance criterions such as
dependability, initiative, output, attendance, attitude etc.
Each scales ranges from excellent to poor. The total
numerical scores are computed and final conclusions are
derived. Advantages – Adaptability, easy to use, low cost,
every type of job can be evaluated, large number of
employees covered, no formal training required.
Disadvantages – Rater’s biases
3. Checklist method

5. Under this method, checklist of statements of traits of
employee in the form of Yes or No based questions is
prepared. Here the rater only does the reporting or
checking and HR department does the actual evaluation.
Advantages – economy, ease of administration, limited
training required, standardization. Disadvantages – Raters
biases, use of improper weighs by HR, does not allow
rater to give relative ratings
4. Critical Incidents Method
The approach is focused on certain critical behaviors of
employee that makes all the difference in the
performance. Supervisors as and when they occur record
such incidents. Advantages – Evaluations are based on
actual job behaviors, ratings are supported by
descriptions, feedback is easy, reduces recency biases,
chances of subordinate improvement are high.
Disadvantages – Negative incidents can be prioritized,
forgetting incidents, overly close supervision; feedback
may be too much and may appear to be punishment.
5. Essay Method

6. In this method the rater writes down the employee
description in detail within a number of broad categories
like, overall impression of performance, promoteability
of employee, existing capabilities and qualifications of
performing jobs, strengths and weaknesses and training
needs of the employee. Advantage – It is extremely
useful in filing information gaps about the employees
that often occur in a better-structured checklist.
Disadvantages – It its highly dependent upon the writing
skills of rater and most of them are not good writers.
They may get confused success depends on the memory
power of raters.
6. Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales
statements of effective and ineffective behaviors
determine the points. They are said to be
behaviorally anchored. The rater is supposed to
say, which behavior describes the employee
performance. Advantages – helps overcome rating
errors. Disadvantages – Suffers from distortions
inherent in most rating techniques.
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