Performance Appraisal & Staff Evaluation

Ten Most Common Errors of Performance Appraisals:

1.Gut feeling (subjectiveness) 2.Lack of follow-up 3.Improper preparation; poor documentation 4.Biases 5.Recency effect: over-emphasis on recent performance 6.Inadequately defined and/or misunderstood standards/goals 7.Lacking truth 8.Poor interviewer (poor environment, poor use of time, domineering, poor listener, etc.) 9.Conducting an "annual" review (as opposed to the ongoing review) 10.Negative approach: catching them doing something wrong (as opposed to the One Minute Manager Approach of catching them doing something right)

The primary reason to conduct a performance appraisal is to provide: •Constructive feedback •Punishment •Coaching Identification

Constructive feedback

Which of the following is an important facet of note taking? •Not specific and behavior-oriented •Forces the manager to deal with the problem •Records only undesirable events •Failure to give performance feedback

Forces the manager to deal with the problem

Assigning a rating on the basis of an overall impression is known as: •Absolute judgment •Halo error •Leniency error •Recency error

Halo error

After her evaluation, a staff nurse exclaims: "I'm not sure if my manager knows much about my performance, really. He only had three specific examples to give me, two good performance examples and one to work on and they all happened in the last month. I don't feel like he can see the whole picture." What kind of performance appraisal rating does this statement exemplify? •Absolute judgment •Halo error •Leniency error •Recency error

Recency error

What is performance appraisal?

•A method of defining and evaluating job performance of an employee •It guides and manages career development •An analysis of an employee's successes and failures, personal strengths and weaknesses, and suitability for possible further training •A method of enhancing performance, job motivation, and job satisfaction

The performance appraisal process includes:

•Day to day manager-employee interactions •Making notes about an employee's behavior •Completing the performance appraisal form •The formal appraisal interview •Follow-up sessions that may involve coaching and/or discipline when needed

Diagnosing motivational problems

•Does the employee think there are obstacles to what is expected of them? •Does the employee believe that his/her behavior will lead to punishment, reward, or inaction? •Analyze past performance: Is there acceptable performance and little change in performance?

Behavioral criteria of performance appraisal

•Focuses on what the employee actually does •Gives the employee specific info on what needs to be done and how to behave in the job setting •Less likely to lead to legal problems, unlike trait-orientated systems, because employees know what is expected of them •Disadvantage: time consuming to make a behavioral chart for each employee

Factors of lack of appraiser motivation

•If a nurse manager gives low ratings to a poor employee, a superior may overrule and raise the ratings •Time constraints due to nurses busy schedule and multitude of tasks to perform (View as something that can be done later) •Many managers don't prioritize performance evaluations, especially if salary increases are fixed •The organization does not reward the person for doing a good job •The manager's superior spends little time on the nurse manager's own appraisal

Diagnosing ability/ skill problems

•Is the employee able to perform necessary skills according to workplace standards? •Have they been able to do so in the past?

Examples of biases in performance appraisals

•Positive leniency •Negative leniency •Halo effect: occurs when the manager evaluates an employee based upon his or her overall performance and is not specific to different functions of the nurse's performance •Attribution: tending to see poor performance more within control of the individual and superior performance as more of an influence of external factors •Stereotyping •Contrast effect: contrasting one employee's accomplishments against another •Unfair comparison: comparing one employee against another •First impression •Central tendency (forced bell curve): expecting in any group that there will be some poor employees and some great employees

Critical incidents

•Reports of employee behavior that is out of the ordinary, either in a positive or negative direction •Include name of employee, date and time of incident, a brief description of what occurred, additional comments •The description of the incident should focus on what actually took place, not on an interpretation of what happened

Components to be evaluated:

•Traits and personal characteristics •Results-oriented system •Behavioral criteria •Combining the different types of criteria

Goals of the performance appraisal interview

•to enhance motivation •to increase performance •to link rewards to performance