Although it may sound weird, the first aspect that leads to greater employee perception of performance appraisal as just is ensuring that the assessment is indeed fair. On the one hand, strictly subjective evaluations based solely on managerial opinion are usually considered unjust. On the other hand, Cathy O’Neil, in her book “Weapons of math destruction: How Big Data increases inequality and threatens democracy,” discusses how even seemingly objective tests can be unfair (Berry, 2020).
One way to solve these issues is to combine subjective and objective appraisal methods to balance their shortcomings (Schmitt, 2012). Another way would be educating managers on how to avoid subjectivity in appraisal and ensuring that ‘objective’ tests measure knowledge and performance which is important. In other words, leaders should be critical of their assessment tools and seek to improve them constantly. For example, managers can ask employees to provide feedback concerning the PA forms. Solely these efforts can increase workers’ trust in the fairness of the system.
Additionally, managers should ensure the transparency of the performance appraisal process and occasionally communicate those criteria through emails or during meetings, and urge employees to file complaints if some of the rules are violated. Next, company leaders can create a system of third-party arbitration in cases when managers’ appraisal does not match the objective performance results. These measures will further promote the workers’ faith in the fairness of performance appraisal.
The literature on employee management widely acknowledges the impact of various biases on employee or potential employee assessment. For instance, Goldstein (2017) mentions that managers can often base their judgment about workers based on stereotypes such as gender, ethnicity, age, and religious background, to name a few. For these reasons, it seems reasonable to create training that would teach administrators to recognize these biases, as they sometimes may be implicit and address them properly. Moreover, managers can be taught to assess workers only for their work-related performance and behavior and avoid considering other factors. As mentioned earlier, workers can be surveyed concerning the adequacy of the measured performance attributes concerning PA forms. In addition, to minimize the number of biases, second-line managers can review the initial evaluations of a supervisor. Finally, the evaluations of all the employees in the company can be conducted during the same period to avoid the change in factors that can affect managers’ assessment.
References
Berry, P. (2020). Troubleshooting algorithms: A book review of Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil. The McMaster Journal of Communication, 12(2), 91-96. Web.
Goldstein, H. (2017). The Wiley Blackwell handbook of the psychology of recruitment, selection and employee retention. John Wiley & Sons.
Schmitt, N. (Ed.). (2012). The Oxford handbook of personnel assessment and selection [electronic resource]. Oxford University Press.