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Performance Management

Performance Assessment plays an important role in human resource management processes. However, factual evidence shows that there is a high rate of assessment failures. One of reasons leading to this issue is the illogical design of performance assessment forms. This essay firstly outlines the performance management technique using in the Performance Appraisal Form Template issued by Businessballs (www.businessballs.com). This essay will then analyse its strengths and weaknesses related to assessment validity, reliability and felt-fairness. Finally, this essay will discuss some aspects where this instrument can be re-designed to improve its validity, reliability and felt-fairness.
This appraisal form, also referred to as an instrument, is a generic assessment instrument which could be applied to most positions, both non-managerial and managerial. Basically, this form consists of two main parts. In correspondence with each part, different assessment sources are used. For example, part A uses self assessment source. In this part, assessees are required to evaluate themselves. Part B uses supervisory assessment sources. This part will be completed by assessors through performance review meetings with assessees. The review meetings have the 'problem solving' style with the placement of open discussions between assessors and assessees to identify the strengths and weaknesses of assessees (section B2, B3 and B4), and then to find out the solutions to assessees' performance problems (section B5, B6, B7 and B8).
There are several performance management techniques applied in this form. The first technique is the management by objectives (MBO). The use of this technique can be found in both the two parts of this form. Particularly, in part A, assessees are required to review their main duties and responsibilities (section A1); to evaluate the achievement of agreed objectives in the past years (section A3); and to identify new objectives and action plan for the...