TRADITIONAL METHODS OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

1. RATING SCALES METHOD

Rating Scales Method is commonly used method for assessing the
performance of the employees and well known traditional method of
appraisal of employees.

Depending upon the job of employee under this method of appraisal traits
like attitude, performance, regularity, accountability and sincerity etc, are
rated with scale from 1 to 10. 1 indicates negative feedback and 10
indicates positive feedback as shown below.
Attitude of employee towards his superiors, colleagues and
customers
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Regularity in the job

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Under this method of performance appraisal, employee may be assessed

by his superiors, colleagues, subordinates or sometimes by his customers
which all depends of nature of the company or job which is added where
the employee. Appraiser is a person who appraises employee, he will give
rating for every trait given by marking or choosing number basing on his
observation and satisfaction. Ultimately all numbers chosen or marked
will be added to determine highest score gained by employee. Employee
who scored more points will be treated as top performer, following
descending scored employees will be treated as low performer and the
least scored employee will be treated as non-performer.
2. ESSAY APPRAISAL METHOD
This traditional form of appraisal, also known as ‘Free Form Method’
involves a description of the performance of an employee by his superior.
The description is an evaluation of the performance of an individual based
on the facts and often includes examples and evidences to support the
information. A major drawback of the method is the inseparability of the
bias of the evaluator.

Under this method, the rater is asked to express the strong as well as
weak points of the employee’s behaviour. This technique is normally used
with a combination of the graphic rating scale because the rater can
elaborately present the scale by substantiating an explanation to his
rating. While preparing the essay on the employee, the rater considers
the following factors:

 Job knowledge and potential of the employee;

 Employee’s understanding of the company’s programmes, policies,
objectives etc
 The employee’s relations with co-workers and superiors.

Essay evaluation is a non-quantitative technique. This method is

advantageous in that at least the essay provides a good deal of
information about the employee and also reveals more about the
evaluator. The essay evaluation method however, suffers from the
limitations:
 It is a highly subjective; the supervisor may write a biased essay.
The employees who are sycophants will be evaluated more
favourably than other employees;

 Some evaluations may be poor in writing essays on employee

performance. Others may be superficial in explanation and use
flowery language which may not reflect the actual performance if
the employees. It is very difficult to find effective writers nowadays.

 The appraiser is required to find time to prepare the essay. A busy

appraiser may write the essay hurriedly without properly assessing
the actual performance of the worker. On the other hand, appraiser
takes long time, this becomes uneconomical from the view point of
the firm, because the time of the evaluator (supervisor) is costly.
3. RANKING METHOD
Under the raking method, the manager compares an employee to other
similar employees, rather than to a standard measurement.
Predetermined percentages of employees are placed in various
performance categories, for example, excellent, above average, average,
below average and poor. The employees ranked in the top group usually
get the rewards (raise, bonus, promotion), those not at the top tend to
have the rewards withheld, and those at the bottom sometimes get
punished.

Why and when do we use the ranking method

Managers have to make evaluative decisions, such as who is the
employee of the month, who gets a raise or promotion, and who gets laid
off. So when we have to make evaluative decisions, such as who is the
employee of the month, who gets a raise or promotion and who gets laid
off. So when we have to make evaluative decisions, we generally have to
use ranking. However, our ranking can, and when possible should be
based on other methods and forms. Ranking can also be used for
developmental purposes by letting employees know where they stand in
comparison to their peers – they can be motivated to improve
performance.
4. PAIRED COMPARISON
A better technique of comparison that the straight ranking method, this
method compares each employee with all others in the group, one at a
time. After all the comparisons on the basis of the overall comparisons,
the employees are given the final rankings.
5. CRITICAL INCIDENTS METHODS
This technique of performance appraisal was developed by Flanagan and
Burns. The manager prepares lists of statements of very effective and
ineffective behaviour of an employee. These critical incidents or events
represent the outstanding or poor behaviour of employees on the job.
The manager maintains logs on each employee, whereby he periodically
records critical incidents of the workers behaviour. At the end of the
rating period, these recorded critical incidents are used in the evaluation
of the workers’ performance. An example of a good critical incident of a
sales assistant is the following:
July 20 – The sales clerk patiently attended to the customers complaint.
He is polite, prompt, enthusiastic in solving the customers’ problem. Or
July 20 – The sales assistant stayed 45 minutes over on his break during
busiest part of the day. He failed to answer the store manager’s call
thrice. He is lazy, negligent, stubborn and uninterested in work.

This method provides an objective basis for conducting a thorough

discussion of an employee’s performance. This method avoids recency
bias (most incidents get too much emphasis). This method suffers
however from the following limitations:
 Negative incidents may be more noticeable than positive incidents;
 The supervisors have a tendency to unload a series of complaints
about incidents during an annual performance review session;
 It results in very close supervision which may not be liked by the
employee
 The recording of incidents may be a chore for the manager
concerned, who may be too busy or forget to do it.
Critical Incident Method
Ex: fire, sudden breakdown, accident
Workers Reaction Scale
A Informed the supervisor immediately 5
B Become anxious on loss of output 4
C Tried to repair the machine 3
D Complained for poor maintenance 2
E Was happy to forced test 1

6. CONFIDENTIAL REPORT SYSTEM

Confidential report system is well known method of performance appraisal
system mostly being used by the Government organisations. In this
method of appraising system, a subordinate is observed by his superiors
regarding his performance in the job and on his performance, mainly on
his behaviour in the organisation and conduct and remarks if any.
Confidential reports will be forwarded to the top management officials for
taking decision against the person on whom confidential report has made.
Confidential reports are the main criteria for promoting or transferring of
any employee mainly in government sector. All governmental
organisations for example the judiciary, police departments a use
confidential report system.
Procedure of confidential report system
The superiors who appraises their subordinates performance, behaviour
and other key issues will be kept in the form of writing on paper, which is
called as confidential report. Confidential report should not be sent
openly on a paper, it must be kept in a sealed cover to send it to decision-
making authorities. Only authorised persons are allowed to open the
sealed covers which consists of confidential reports. Confidential
reports shall not be handed over in loose sheets to the
subordinates.

7. CHECKLIST METHOD
The rater is given a checklist of the descriptions of the behaviour of the
employees on job. The checklist contains a list of statement on the basis
of which the rater describes the on the job performance of the employees.

This is a simple type of individual evaluation method. A checklist

represents, in its simplest form, a set of objectives or descriptive
statements about the employee and his behaviour. If the rater believes
strongly that the employee possesses a particular listed trait, he checks
the item; otherwise, he leaves the item blank. A more recent variation of
the checklist methods is the weighted list. Under this, the value of each
question may be weighted equally or certain questions may be weighted
equally or certain questions may be weighted more heavily than others.
The following are some of the sample questions in the checklist.
 Is the employee really interested in the task assigned? Yes/No
 Is he respected by his colleagues (co-workers) Yes/No
 Does he give respect to his superiors? Yes/No
 Does he follow instructions property? Yes/No
 Does he make mistakes frequently? Yes/No

8. GRAPHIC RATING SCALE

This is the very popular traditional method of appraisal. Under this
method, core traits of employee pertaining to his job are carefully defined
like Attitude, Knowledge of Work, Managerial Skills, Team Work, Honesty,
Regularity, Accountability, Interpersonal relationships, Creativity and
discipline etc. These traits are allotted with numerical scale to tabulate
the scores gained by appraise (employee in performance assessment
relating to his job by appraiser (employer) and sum-u to determine the
best performer. Appraiser ticks rating of particular trait depending upon
his endeavour in his job. Scores vary from employee to employee
depending up on his performance levels and endeavour in his job.

This method is popular because it is simple and does not require any
writing ability. The method is easy to understand and use. Comparison
among pairs is possible. This is necessary for decision on salary
increases, promotions etc.
Example of Graphic Rating Scale Method
Performance Trait Excelle Good Averag Fair Poor
nt e
Attitude 5 4 3 2 1
Knowledge of Work 5 4 3 2 1
Managerial Skills 5 4 3 2 1
Team Work 5 4 3 2 1
Honesty 5 4 3 2 1
Regularity 5 4 3 2 1
Accountability 5 4 3 2 1
Interpersonal relationships 5 4 3 2 1
Creativity 5 4 3 2 1
Discipline 5 4 3 2 1
5 4 3 2 1

9. FORCED DISTRIBUTION
The system is 17 to 18 years old, and most big organisations started
waking up to this form of performance appraisal in the late’90s. The
graphical representation of the fact that everybody’s performance is not
the same (this is represented in a bell curve).
The system requires the managers to evaluate each individual and rank
them typically into one of the three categories (excellent, good, poor).
The system is thought to be relatively widely-used, but remains somewhat
controversial due to the competition it creates and also the reality that
not all employees will fit neatly into one of the categories and might end
up in a category that does not reflect their true performance.

Forced ranking is a method of performance appraisal to rank employees

but inorder of forced distribution.

For example, the distribution requested with 10 or 20 percent in the top

category, 70 or 80 percent in the middle and 10 percent in the bottom.