Page 399 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

386 M a n a g e m e n t o f H u m a n R e s o u r c e s R e s o u r c e R e q u i r e m e n t s t o M a n a g e t h e Q u a l i t y F u n c t i o n 387

are often used to determine who gets what share of the budget
“pie” allocat ed to salary increases. Also, a year is deemed to be a
sufficiently long peri od to accomplish the performance goals set
forth when the standards were developed.
• The assessment. Traditionally, the assessment is one-way: the
supervisor evaluating the employee. Employees are sometimes
invited to provide observations of their own.
• Meeting. A private, face-to-face meeting is held between the
supervisor and the employee to discuss the assessment.

Companies that use the traditional approach feel that it provides such
benefits as:

• Giving feedback to employees
• Giving direction to employees
• Identifying training needs
• Fostering communication between manager and employee
• Providing evidence for promotion decisions
• Providing a basis for compensation decisions
• Serving as a defense in legal cases associated with promotions or
terminations
The “deliverable” of the performance appraisal is often a ranking of
employees, that is, employee #1, #2, etc. Another, related deliverable is the
“employee rating.” Labels such as “outstanding,” “satisfactory,” or “low”
are applied to each employee. Some firms place people into groups defined
in other ways. The rankings, ratings, and groupings are then used to deter-
mine promotions, pay increases, or even disciplinary actions and dismissals.

Criticisms of Traditional Employee Appraisals
Let me preface this section by stating that the literature criticizing
employ ee appraisals is so vast that we can provide but a brief summary of
it here. Benneyan (1994) provides a bibliography of papers critical to per-
formance appraisal that contains almost 300 references dating back to
1932. Deming lists performance appraisals as the “third deadly disease”
of Western management:

Personal review system, or evaluation of performance, merit rating, annual review, or
annual appraisal, by whatever name, for people in management, the effects … are dev-
astating. Annual merit rating is destructive to long-term planning, nourishes short-
term performance, annihilates teamwork, and demoralizes employees. Management by
objective, on a go, no-go basis, without a method for accomplishment of the objective, is
the same thing by another name. Management by fear would be still better.

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