The overall objective of any performance appraisal process should be to improve future performance of employees. But all too often, performance appraisals have the opposite effect by being perceived as politicized and highly subjective, thus creating feelings of intrusiveness, mistrust, and favoritism. Below are some practical tips on how to improve performance appraisal processes within your organization:

1.) Stress to employees that performance appraisals are conducted for one reason and one reason only: To facilitate a formative process aimed at improving future performance.

2.) Provide training to raters that focuses on ways to improve both the reliability and validity of performance appraisal processes. During these training sessions, raters should be made aware of potential biases that may often be problematic in attempting to provide objective appraisals. (For a more detailed discussion of potential biases and how to avoid them, please see my capsule entitled "Eliminating Biases in Performance Appraisal Processes").

3.) Identify critical elements of each employee's job and make sure that those dimensions are the ones that are concentrated on most heavily during the apprisal process. Avoid rating employees on dimnensions that have little to do with critiical job elements.

4.) To ensure consistency among raters, make sure that what comprises ratings on a particular scale are clearly articulated. For instance, if individuals are rating employees from 1 = poor to 5 = excellent on the degree to which they adequately handle customer inquiries, be sure that all employees know what each point on the scale represents (e.g., 2 = handles routine inquiries adequately but usually has difficulty addressing inquiries that are beyond typical billing questions).

5.) Stress to raters that they are being held accountable for providing ratings that are not influenced by personal feelings that they might have for particular employees. Nothing challoanges the integrity of performance appraisal processes more than raters utilizing the system as a mechanism to benefit "friends" or to retailate against "enemies". While this piece of advise may sound obvious, I am amazed at the number of times that i have witnessed "politics" influencing ratings.

6.) As a part of the process, ensure that individual meetings are held with each employee and that both strengths and areas for improvement are elaborated upon in adequate detail. Mutually agreed upon performance goals should be then established between supervisors and each employee. Joint ownership of these goals is extremely important.

7.) In the case of employees with performance levels that are deemed sub-par, it is extremely important to determine whether the problem has more to do with a lack of ability or with a lack of motivation, The former type of problem might be dealt with via additional training or job reassignment while the latter problem may have more to do with managerial interventions aimed at creating a more favorable work environment.

These suggestions represent a basic framework and general operating phiolosophy for conducting performance appraisals within organizations. Future capsules will focus in more detail on various elements of the process.