Personnel appraisal is a system of identifying employee characteristics that aim to help the manager of an organization make decisions to improve the performance of subordinates. The main objectives of appraisal are several points. Firstly, personnel appraisal is helpful in determining the correlation between the cost of employing an individual and the factual amount of work done. Secondly, the capability of current employees is evaluated. There is a possibility to promote some of them to leading positions without expenditures on search and training of new employees. Thirdly, evaluation helps determine the single employee’s operational role – whether they are only a team player or, under certain conditions, can show themselves as a distinct personality.
This paper will take a closer look at the checklist as a method of personnel competence evaluation since it provides an objective view of employees’ professional qualities and is one of the most widespread nowadays. Among the main advantages of checklists as personnel assessment tools is creating narrowly focused tools for assessing specific qualities of interest to the employer (Dipboye 2018). These are the job, personality, behavior, and other characteristics by which an employee’s performance is evaluated. Each criterion determines how the job function must be performed to meet the requirements of clients and the company.
However, the disadvantage of this method is that many details must be taken into account when developing personnel evaluation criteria. These may be the characteristics of the organization, the market sector in which it operates, and the purposes and challenges of the evaluation. This is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. It is also important to identify which measures should be considered a priority. For instance, when evaluating line staff, the main criterion may be the quality of work: absence of errors, compliance with service standards, discipline, commitment, and workload.
Another advantage of checklists is that they are structured. All personnel assessment criteria in checklists are conveniently divided into two groups according to the employer’s objective (Dipboye 2018). The first group is the assessment of competencies. This evaluates an individual’s competence and skills, his capacity to implement them in practical work, demeanor, and personal qualities. The second group is the precise performance assessment. It is based on comparing the performance of an individual member of staff with the target values for that period of employment and function. The results of the employee’s work can be expressed, for example, in the number of sales per month, the number of realized projects, the sum of profits, or the number of concluded deals. All the criteria of these two groups can be conveniently summarized in a checklist, making it one of the most common tools for evaluating staff performance.
The third advantage of checklists is that such a tool is suitable for both qualitative and quantitative assessments of staff performance. For example, qualitative or descriptive methods characterize employees without strict quantitative data and have several assessment techniques. Among them is the matrix method, which compares the qualities of a specific person to an ideal model of an employee for a given position. The checklist is great for this, as it allows for a structured and convenient comparison of characteristics.
It is also excellent for quantitative methods as it allows the assessment data set to be set out and handled. The main disadvantage of the checklist is that it is often misused, as it requires specific knowledge to use. For example, employers are often confused by the checklist appraisal system. It requires strict uniformity; otherwise, the result will not be correct. Checklists can also be too long and tedious to fill in, so it is advisable not to exceed eight questions or points.
Performance appraisal helps the ADDIE model because it is an effective learning tool that improves the workplace and enables them to meet company standards and expectations. Because performance appraisal is not tied to a specific tool such as a checklist, it makes sense to talk about it in general. Performance evaluation helps the ADDIE model in almost all phases. In the design phase, the appraisal’s development according to specific appraisal criteria makes it possible to understand whether the employee needs a position in that organization. In addition, the performance appraisal at this stage helps to say whether the organization needs to change its structure, how it currently works, or how it will work in the future.
During the developmental phase, the assessment can develop the employee’s desire to learn and perform better after the appraisal. Therefore, the assessment can lead to improvements and changes in the organization’s outlook on the creation of content and learning materials. In the implementation phase, the function of the evaluation system is to introduce the appraisal into the training procedure for all employees to make them aware of the specific changes or what the organization requires. In the evaluation phase, the function of the evaluation system is to solicit feedback from the organization and improve the performance of the staff and the organization.
Reference
Dipboye, R.L. (2018). The Emerald review of industrial and organizational psychology. Emerald Publishing Limited. Web.