True evaluation of employees is very essential for the health and
success of any organization. In my opinion, the health of organizations
should take priority and come first, because when it is properly
maintained, success will naturally follow. By the word "health," I refer
to the culture and environment of organizations. Some mistakenly
believe that organizational culture is a touchy-feely subjective
concept, but in reality, it has tangible elements — you can sense it as
soon as you enter the door of any organization, and that is another
story.
True evaluation of employees is a part of performance
appraisal which is a systematic description of an employee's strengths
and weaknesses, and performance appraisal itself is a part of
performance management (the big picture) which is a continuous process
of identifying, measuring, and developing the performance of individuals
and teams and aligning performance with the strategic goals of the
organization. The purpose of any performance management is not only for administrative issues (job evaluation - equal employment
opportunity/affirmative action; EEO/AA - compensation - etc.) but also
for developmental issue (individual evaluation - Training - career
planning - etc.).
The presence of strong performance management
is directly proportional to the strength, success, and maturity of
organizations. As true good evaluation system will ensure that employees
are fairly assessed, developed, and motivated, leading to a more
productive, engaged, and satisfied work environment, while a lack of
true and fair evaluation not only results in talent loss and the
creation of a group of mediocre employees who are unfit for their
positions, but more dangerously, it fosters an unfair culture and low
morale among employees and teams, and this can easily damage the
organization and create a toxic unproductive work environment.
"Just one act of unfairness can ruin an entire organization".
But
the main question here is: Do managers know how to evaluate
effectively? This is a significant problem in implementing an effective
performance management system. Many managers do not know how to evaluate
properly, and they even do not recognize the importance of performance
management as a cornerstone of any organizational success. Many managers
(raters) fall into several common evaluation errors, such as:
1.
Similar-to-Me Bias: Raters tend to favor employees who are similar to
them in terms of personality, background, interests, or inside their
inner circle (aka faction or clique).
2. Recency Error: This bias
occurs when a rater focuses primarily on recent performance, ignoring
earlier accomplishments at the beginning of the year.
3. Leniency
Error: This occurs when a rater consistently gives high ratings to
employees, regardless of their actual performance.
4. Strictness Error: The opposite of leniency, this error involves consistently giving low ratings to employees.
5. Central Tendency Error: This happens when a rater avoids extreme ratings and tends to rate most employees as average.
6.
Halo Effect: This occurs when a rater's overall positive impression of
an employee influences ratings on specific performance dimensions.
7.
Horns Effect: The opposite of the halo effect, where a negative
impression of an employee leads to low ratings across all performance
dimensions.
8. Contrast Effect: This happens when a rater compares employees to each other rather than to performance standards.
9. First Impression Error: A rater's first impression of an employee can unfairly affect how they are rated later on.
All
these errors are common among managers (raters), and most of us
encounter them clearly, specially in the Egyptian work environment.
Article by Amr H. Abayazeed - August 16, 2024.
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