Reflection on Performance Appraisals: Benefits, Challenges, and Legal Insights

Performance appraisals and reviews have become crucial tools in the modern corporate world. The main supporters of appraisals and reviews highlight their usefulness in ensuring employee productivity and communicating an organization’s standard work performance and culture. Critics, however, cite some dangers of over-reliance on performance appraisals as, psychologically, human beings are prone to unconscious biases when it comes to decision-making. This paper gives personal insights on performance appraisals and reviews by answering questions on the topic.

I would focus on three main elements to make the performance appraisal process described in the LA Times more impactful in an organization. One of these elements would be for the managers to focus on the outcomes of employee efforts instead of the methods they used to get there unless the methods were unethical. Timing of the appraisal results should be such that they are sensitive to the employees’ conditions. The other element would be cautious of the wording used in the appraisals and reviews to avoid vagueness, stereotyping, and discrimination (Vranjes, 2016).

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On the one hand, I would like to work for such a company as it is important for me as an individual to be kept on my toes in my work life. The company does this by receiving helpful, regular, and actionable feedback from others. On the other hand, working for such a company would require always walking on eggshells around the managers making the performance appraisals as interactions with them could result in either positive or negative results based on the biases they have from these interactions, as shown in the Anderson vs. Yahoo case (Masunaga & Lien, 2016). At the end of it all, I would like to work in such a company as there are such tools that help me improve professionally and provide safety nets for growth opportunities.

There are several laws that prohibit discrimination against protected groups that are relevant to performance appraisals. An example of such a rule is ensuring a performance appraisal is free of gender and age biases. For gender biases, this includes using phrases such as “too emotional,” while for age biases, this includes using phrases such as “too rigid to change.” This is particularly emphasized by Segal, a partner at Duane Morris LLP, in the Employment, Labor, Benefits and Immigration Practice Group (Hastings, 2010).

When designing a legally defensible performance appraisal system, I recommend a couple of recommendations. One main recommendation would be to include a comparative question in the appraisal instrument and a performance criterion to help make comparisons of employee performance to that of their peers. The other recommendation would be to include the employees in the evaluation process by including self-assessments which would be helpful in setting future performance goals.

References

Hastings., R. R. (2010). Legal expert gives performance appraisal advice. Society for Human Rescource Management. Retrieved from https://shrm.org/rescources/hr-topics/employee- relations/pages/legalexpertgives.aspx

Musanaga., S. & Lien., T. (2016). Yahoo ex-employee sues, alleging manipulation of performancereviews and gender bias. Los Angeles Times

Vranjes. T. (2016). Reduce the legal risks of performance reviews. Society for Human Rescource Management. Retrieved from https://shrm.org/rescourcesandtools/legal-and-copmpliance/state-and-local-updates/pages/reduce-the-legal-risks-of-performance-reviews.aspx