Respond to the given:
Annual performance appraisals enable management and monitoring of standards, agreeing expectations and objectives, and delegation of responsibilities and tasks. Staff performance appraisals also establish individual training needs and enable organizational training needs analysis and planning" (Chapman, 2014). I work for a community college, and as such am part of a union. When I was hired, I was placed on probation for the first year, and at the conclusion of that year, I was evaluated by my boss and he made the decision of whether or not to keep me. Although I have not completed my second year, I did ask around my office, and from my colleagues' responses, I don't believe there is a performance appraisal system in place for after that point. Because we are in a union, we do not receive performance based bonuses or raises; they are specified in our contracts. As far as I know, this process is solely used at my college at the conclusion of the probationary period to determine an employee's fate. I believe that it is a good evaluation process, and is very thorough. It asks the evaluating supervisor to determine the employee's strenghts and weaknesses, and what they need to focus on. There is also a section that documents how many days an employee missed during the year, and whether they were vacation days, sick days or other. I like the evaluation process that we have, but if it were up to me, I would absolutely see to it that it was performed annually. Even if it were done annually, because of our union, a bad performance evaluation or two cannot constitute termination from your position.
If I worked someplace where the performance appraisal process fulfilled more than one purpose, I think I would feel conflicted. According to our text, the performance appraisal process has basically three steps: "(1) setting work standards; (2) assessing the employee's actual performance relative to those standards; and (3) providing feedback to the employee with the aim of helping him to eliminate performance deficiencies or to continue to perform above par" (Dessler, 2013). I would really like to have an evaluation done minimally every year so that I know where I need to improve as my job duties continue to evolve. It would be helpful to have one evaluation tell you everything, and I really like the idea of performance based perks, including bonuses and raises. Unfortunately for me, in my current position, that will never happen. I also think that if everything about your performance is to be evaluated by one person, if for some reason you and your superior don't get along well, you probably aren't getting a raise or any other perks. People do play favorites, and that can cause people to suck up to the bosses and bosses to overlook deserving employees who are working very hard to give better evaluations to good friends instead of telling them what they need to improve on.
If it were up to me, I would like an annual performance appraisal done, but I would like it done by a small group of people. This way, if anyone holds any prejudices against any employee, they would still have two other people asking questions and asking that person to explain why they are giving them such a low score. My immediate supervisors are the Registrar and Assistant Registrar. The Registrar's boss is one of the Vice Presidents of the college at the moment, and I think that the three of them together could do our appraisals. Of course, I would love it if they could also throw a perk or two in there, but the chances of that are pretty slim.