Traditional methods of Performance Appraisal - Rating Scales Method - Confidential report system

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-performers.

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 any 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 behavior. 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 for 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;

  • The employee’s general planning, organizing and controlling ability;

  • The attitudes and perceptions of the employee, in general.

Essay evaluation is a non-quantitative technique. This method is advantageous in at least one sense, i.e., 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 following limitations:

• • It is highly subjective; the supervisor may write a biased essay. The employees who are sycophants will be evaluated more favorably then other employees.

  • Some evaluators 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 of the employee. 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 a long time, this becomes uneconomical from the view point of the firm, because the time of the evaluator (supervisor) is costly.

3. RANKING METHOD

How do we use the ranking method? Under the ranking method, the manager com-pares an employee to other similar employees, rather than to a standard measurement. An offshoot of ranking is the forced distribution method, which is similar to grading on a curve. 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 reward withheld, and those at the bottom sometimes get punished. In Self-Assessment and Skill Builder 8-1, you are asked to rank the performance of your peers.

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, 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.

Raking Method Appraisal System for Judicial Officers in the Judiciary

As per the existing system prevailing at present, the Judicial Officers are rated as very good/good/satisfactory/ average/poor on the basis of their performance for a particular period and units (disposing of cases) are prescribed for that purpose. As a example, judiciary has the following unit system.

The officers working in the cadre of Principal District and Session Judge have to secure 10 units in a month of 22 working days.

The officers working in the cadre of additional District and Session's Judge have to secure 11 units and the officers working in the cadre of the Senior Civil Judges also have to secure 11 units in a month consisting of 22 working days.

The officer working in the cadre of Junior Civil Judge/Magistrate has to secure 17 units in a month of 22 working days.

The grading system is as follows.

• • If an officer secures twice the number of units fixed, he will be rated as very good.

  • In the similar fashion If the officer secures one and half times of the units fixed and up to twice the units fixed, he will be rated as good.

  • If the officer could secure the norms fixed, and up to the one and half times of the norms, will be treated as satisfactory.

  • If the officer secures less than the units fixed, but not less than half of the units fixed, he will be treated as average.

  • If the officer secures less than half of the units fixed, he will be considered poor.

The unit system prescribes specific units for a specific case. If a case is disposed of on contest i.e. after full trial, one unit will be allocated. If a case is disposed of and it is a hostile case, then half of the unit prescribed for that case will be allocated.

4. PAIRED COMPARISON

A better technique of comparison than 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 behavior of an employee. These critical incidents or events represent the outstanding or poor behavior of employees on the job. The manager maintains logs on each employee, whereby he periodically records critical incidents of the workers behavior. 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.

On the other hand the bad critical incident may appear as under:

July 20 – The sales assistant stayed 45 minutes over on his break during the 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 recent 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.

6. CONFIDENTIAL REPORT SYSTEM

Confidential report system is well known method of performance appraisal system mostly being used by the the Government organisations and in the Indian Judiciary. In this method of appraising system, subordinate is observed by his superiors regarding his performance in the job and on his duties done. Thereafter Superior writes confidential report on his performance, mainly on his behaviour in the organisation and conduct and remarks if any. confidential reports will be kept confidential and will not be revealed to anyone and finally confidential reports will be forwarded to the top management officials for taking decision against person on whom confidential report has made. Confidential reports are the main criteria for promoting or transferring of any employee mainly in the government sector. All governmental organisations example judiciary, police Department and other government departments in the India are using confidential reports method as a tool to know about the employee and to take any decision connecting to him.

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.

Key factors assessed in Confidential Report writing

• • Character and conduct of an employee

  • Absenteeism of an employee

  • Knowledge of an employee

  • His nature and quality of work

  • Punctuality of employee

  • Unauthorized absenteeism or leave without permission

  • Behaviour of an employee with colleagues, superiors and with public

  • Ability of supervision and controlling

  • His/her integrity and honesty

  • If any complaints against employee

Annual Performance Appraisal Reports Must Be Communicated To Public Servants, Reiterates SC

Read judgment below

The Supreme Court has reiterated that entries in an Annual Performance Appraisal Report must be communicated to a public servant.

In Pankaj Prakash vs. United India Insurance Co Ltd., the case of the employee was that the entries in his Annual Performance Appraisal Report for 2010-11 and 2011-12 were not disclosed, as a result of which he was unable to submit a representation at the material time. The writ petition, which he had filed before the Allahabad High Court was dismissed on the ground that, absent an adverse entry or an entry below the benchmark, the failure to communicate did not result in an actionable grievance.

The bench comprising Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Indira Banerjee noted that a three judge bench of the Supreme Court in Sukhdev Singh vs. Union of India has held that, every entry in ACR of a public servant must be communicated to him/her within a reasonable period.

The court said that, since this judgment is declaratory in nature, it cannot be contended that the decision having been implemented from 2013-14, it has no

application for the earlier years. The bench said:

"Admittedly, for one of the years under consideration (2011-12) for the promotional exercise for 2014-15, the appellant was graded a "B", while for the

subsequent two years, he was graded an "A". Consequently, the fact that the appellant was given a lower grading for 2011-12 would materially affect whether or not he should be promoted from Scale III to Scale IV for the year in question. The non-communication of the entries is, therefore, a matter in respect of which a legitimate grievance can be made by the appellant, particularly having regard to the position in law laid down in Dev Dutt (supra) and Sukhdev Singh (supra)."

The bench then disposed of the appeal by directing the authorities to consider the representation, if any, that may be submitted by the employee in respect of the grading which was assigned to him for the relevant years which were taken into consideration during the promotional exercise for 2014-15.

https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/annual-performance-appraisal-reports-must-be-communicated-to-employees-146343

Concern High Court is empowered for evaluating performance of a judicial officer [Article 235 of the Indian Constitution] - Delhi High Court

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W.P.(C) 2759/2000 AND CM APPL. 19808/2017

AJAIB SINGH DATEER ..... Petitioner, Through Dr. M.P. Raju with Ms. C. Kanta Dateer and Mr. Gurpreet Singh, Advs. Vs T. GOVERNOR & ORS .....Respondents, Through Mr. Viraj R. Datar, Adv. for DHC.

Concern High Court is empowered for evaluating performance of a judicial officer [Article 235 of the Indian Constitution]

The petitioner, who was awarded ‘C’ grading with the remark “doubtful integrity”, had challenged his ACR (Annual confidential reports) for the year 1995 on the ground that it was “entirely unfounded” as it was based entirely on hearsay and not any objective material.

It held that by virtue of Article 235 of the Constitution of India, the task of considering and evaluating performance of a judicial officer with respect to judicial or quasi-judicial duties and responsibilities, is that of the High Court.

The performance evaluation of character and integrity of the judicial officer can only be done by his parent organization i.e. the High Court and this “primary task” cannot be said to be supplanted, the Court held.

“The assessment and evaluation of the performance of such officials is merely an input for the overall determination.”, High Court clarified.

The Court, hence, concluded that there was no infirmity or illegality in the procedure adopted by the Full Court while recording ‘C’ grading with “doubtful integrity” in respect of the petitioner for the year 1995.

The Delhi High Court has dismissed a petition filed by a retired judicial officer challenging the ‘C’ grade given to him in his Annual Confidential Report (ACR).

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 statements on the basis of which the rater describes the on the job performance of the employees.

Another simple type of individual evaluation method is the checklist. A checklist represents, in its simplest form, a set of objectives or descriptive statements about the employee and his behavior. 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 method is the weighted list. Under this, the value of each question 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 properly? Yes/No

  • Does he make mistakes frequently? Yes/No

8. GRAPHIC RATING SCALE

This is the very popular, traditional method of performance 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. Theses traits are allotted with with numerical scale to tabulate the scores gained by appraisee (employee) in performance assessment relating to his job by appraiser (employer) and sum-up to determine the best performer. Appraiser ticks rating of particular trait depending upon his endeavor in his job. Score vary form employee to employee depending up on his performance levels and endeavor 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, promotion, etc. Companies like DELL, Maruthi Suzuki India Ltd and airtel are using this graphic rating scale method to appraise performance of their employees in there jobs and to take decisions regarding the matters concerned to employees

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 bell curve is nothing but a graphical representation of the fact that everybody's performance is not the same. Some employees will be outstanding, some average, and others at the bottom. Irrespective of whether or not the bell curve is the most appropriate representation of performance or human behaviour, some believe that it is the most viable option, especially in services-driven sectors, which have large workforce. The system requires the managers to evaluate each individual, and rank them typically into one of 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. One of the first companies to use this system was General Electric, in the 1980s.--------Businessdictionary.com

In India, big Indian employers including Infosys, Wipro, ICICI Bank and Aditya Birla Group evaluate lakhs of employees on the basis of this system.

Back home, big Indian employers including Infosys, Wipro, ICICI Bank and Aditya Birla Group evaluate lakhs of employees on the basis of this system.

Read more at:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/jobs/why-companies-hang-on-to-bell-curve-based-performance-appraisal-system/articleshow/36119596.cms