Criticisms of appraisal interview

Résumé du document

Conventional appraisal interviews have a certain effectiveness that has been recognized previously. But they also have been criticized for many reasons by managers, employees and theories. Let us have a look at the reasons why their effectiveness is not totally satisfying. The value of the appraisal interview is questionable due to the huge difficulty to measure the value of any human being. An organization's objectives are in a state of conflict with the worthiness and the dignity of every human being.

Extraits

[...] Even in real life, it is seldom possible to take more than an hour for each employee's appraisal interview. Indeed appraisal interviews often last about twenty minutes.Yet spending more time on it would give a minimum chance to the appraiser to build a relationship with the appraisee. It is the only way to achieve the first purpose of the interview which is to motivate the appraisee to improve his performance. To that may be added an overload phenomenon because appraisal interview is only once a year. Thus all criticisms are given at the same time. [...]

[...] This is due to the annual rhythm of appraisal interviews. Manager and appraisee should be able to discuss when needs occur about appraisee's performance, and not only once or twice a year. This process seems to be artificial and reduces the interview's effectiveness. Meyer even found that managers sometimes “save up items where improvement was needed” in order to provide a coherent feed back during the annual interview. HOW ? The lack of effectiveness of appraisal interviews is also due to the way conventional appraisal interviews have been approached. [...]

[...] Finally they are often not convinced that the appraisal instrument is really efficient. This resistance lead them to not pay enough attention to this process to the extent that they do not organize it properly. The consequence of them conducting interviews such a perfunctory manner” is that “many subordinates not recognize what going on”(Douglas Mac Gregor, 1957). How could then any performance appraisal be efficient if those who are precisely at the heart of the matter do not want to participate properly to it? [...]

[...] McGregor, D. (1960). The Human Side of Enterprise. USA: the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. Meyer, H. H. et al. (1965). ‘Split Roles in Performance Appraisal', Harvard Business Review 43 123-129. Performance Appraisal: http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/perfmangmt/appfdbck/perfapp.htm Accessed Pym, D. The Politics and Ritual of Appraisals. In: Lansbury, R. D. (1981). Performance Appraisal. [...]

[...] South Melbourne: The Macmillan Company of Australia PTY Ltd. Redman, T. et al. (2000) ‘Performance Appraisal in an NHS Hospital', Human Resource Management Journal 48-62. Torrington, D. et al. (2005). Human Resource Management. 6th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited. [...]