16. Performance Appraisal

Performance Appraisal in plantations

Performance Appraisal is necessary, "For the successful accomplishment of the organisational goals, it is an essential requirement of the management to monitor the job performance of their members through an evaluation system." Mahapatra, G.B. Basic Concepts of Personnel management. CBS publishers Delhi 1990.

Another definition states that Performance Appraisal is "To assist staff in performing their job to the best of their ability thus maximising their job satisfaction and their contribution to the company's objectives." Myland, Leslie. Managing Performance Appraisal. Croner, Publications UK 1990.

Unfortunately Performance Appraisal is an unacknowledged factor in plantation management in Sri Lanka. In modern working climates great emphasis is laid on the commitment and effort from employees who naturally expect similar reciprocation from their employers. The development of a more participative style of management in many organisations is a positive step towards the achievement of such expectations. This shared style of management can be expressed in a variety of ways such as team briefings, Quality Control Circles and Performance Appraisal.

Performance Appraisal is designed to maximise the effectiveness by bringing participation to a more individualised environment in that it provides a forum for discussions and consultations covering standards of work, potential, aspirations and concerns. It is an opportunity for employees to improve and exert an influence upon the quality of their working lives.

Performance Appraisal must be seen as an intrinsic part of any manager's responsibilities and not regarded as a non productive, time consuming exercise. The subject is concerned with the improvement of performance and effectiveness, all within a manager's ambit of responsibility. It is therefore inappropriate to view appraisal as the responsibility of the personnel department of an organisation which is essentially only a support department of overall management which may treat appraisal simply as another form filling exercise. The personnel department has a more significant role to play in terms of giving expert advice, administration and review. The message is that appraisal is the responsibility of managers who should carry out and follow up appraisal of their own staff using whatever resources that are available to them.

Performance Appraisal is clearly a managerial function and not a function of a Personnel Department.

Performance Appraisal in any form may be ineffective if its results are not used or applied consistently and subordinates qualifying for high evaluations rewarded in some fashion as a matter of policy. Performance Appraisal has also been described as follows: It is a systematic means of ensuring that managers and their staff meet regularly to discuss past and present performance issues and to agree what future action is appropriate on both sides.

The key words in the definition of Performance Appraisal given here are: regular, performance, agree and future.

Such meetings should be based on a clear and mutual understanding of the job or jobs involved and the standards and outcomes, which are part of it. In normal circumstances, employees should be appraised by their immediate managers or heads of departments on one to one basis. It is also essential to realise that certain matters should not be encapsulated in appraisal particularly because one or two traditional methods adopted in carrying out appraisal have led to misconceptions about it. Very often the distinction between assessing performance and appraising performance is not made and a state of confusion is allowed to creep into the two subject areas.

Assessment of performance concerns itself only with the past and present. Appraisal is concerned with the future.

The appraisal of subordinate staff is related to the encouragement they receive from the plantation management to look to the future in order to improve effectiveness, utilise strengths, rectify weaknesses and to examine how their potentials and aspirations combine. Performance Appraisal should be always seen as a channel for open and honest discussion. In the discussion the appraiser, the superintendent, does not judge but promotes agreement about how current performance matches up to requirements and how the future can be approached. Appraisers are not expected to criticise, patronise or confront an employee with whom he wishes to continue a relatively trouble free working relationship. Appraisees also do not have to imagine that they have been labeled as 'average' after an appraisal interview is completed.

The desirability of performance appraisal systems in plantations

A type of Performance Appraisals in plantations were historically conducted by plantation superintendents but such appraisals were restricted to the only other executives of the plantations, the assistant superintendents usually 1-3 in number depending on the size of the plantation. These did not really conform with the features of a proper appraisal but more of a progress report annually submitted to the Head Office for their records and attention if the contents of a report merited attention. (In the plantation industry assistant superintendents had little or no contact with the top management of the plantation company). Such appraisals or more appropriately reports were never extended to other non-executive subordinate staff or the superintendent himself. The subordinate staff cadre of a plantation may comprise a category of up to even 100 heads, once again depending on the size of the plantation. The superintendent is the manager of the plantation. Consequently if it is intended to extend Performance Appraisals of superintendents such an exercise would clearly become the plantation company CEO's responsibility.

Since people constitute the most important element in any organisation, such as a plantation, appraisal is an important necessity and a managerial function of the superintendent. However appraisal is a little known area to managements of organisations in Sri Lanka. Plantation superintendents and their employers too belong to this category. Some type of 'appraisal' is conducted by the personnel departments of a few organisations but these take the form of annual reports related to employees. It has little or no relation to appraisal as a managerial exercise.

In these circumstances, combined with the lack of awareness, necessity, importance and the dearth of expertise on the subject, appraisal is a virtual non-entity in this country and has still to be developed. However while properly identified appraisal is certainly new to the plantation industry superintendents should realise that despite the lack of formal training, they have performed and continue to perform appraisals to a limited degree mainly because it is closely related to motivation. Perhaps some superintendents had an inherent capability of appraising their subordinates without the inauguration of an appraisal scheme even in a basic form. Others may not have been fortunate in being gifted with such built-in capacities and perhaps could not make the gains in management their naturally talented colleagues attained when performing their managerial duties.

In the absence of appraisal schemes, superintendents do not have access to a yard stick by which appraisals can be applied to the many subjects concerning their subordinate staff which naturally include salary increments, incentives in many forms, promotions in the grades of a formalised wage structure or to higher positions carrying responsibility. In many instances superintendents implement such matters as a matter of course in ad hoc fashion and lamentably and frequently face invalidating consequences.

A plantation superintendent is a manager. A manager is someone who gets things done through people. A superintendent has a large workforce working for him under his direction and the results a superintendent obtains will depend mainly on how well his subordinates work. It follows then that the superintendent has to implement whatever is required to maintain and enhance their performance.

In order to achieve that, a superintendent has to take positive steps, which read as follows:

a) Clarify the responsibilities of his subordinates.

b) Define targets and objectives and set standards in performance.

c) Enhance the level of understanding and the means of achieving such targets and objectives and the rewards related to such achievement through motivation.

d) Identify strengths and weaknesses and provide advice and guidance to promote the strengths and surmount weaknesses.

e) Isolate problems and agree how to remedy such difficulties.

f) Initiate training and development programs to a degree that is feasible.

The information a superintendent needs to subject these areas into practice is through appraisal. If a superintendent cannot manage his subordinates effectively he cannot be an effective superintendent unless and until, he appraises what his subordinates are doing and in what manner they are doing it.

The overall approach to Performance Appraisal

Any superintendent will have an impression in his mind effectively or how poorly any job is done by a subordinate in the office, field, factory or in connection with other activities in his plantation. An accumulation of such impressions over a period of time shall provide the superintendent with an idea of an individual subordinate's level of capability in performance and the potential he or she possesses that could be developed in the future. Consequently the superintendent's appraisal of his staff will be a continuous but probably an intuitive process. Some superintendents may be of the opinion that such appraisal is sufficient. The question is, is it?

Ethical considerations in performance appraisal

In Appraisal Systems the appraiser, the superintendent should ask himself the following questions.

a) Am I fully aware of the reasons for Performance Appraisal?

b) Do I possess sufficient information on the appraisee and the circumstances under which the work has been discharged? To what degree has luck, managerial skill or other factors influenced the subordinate's performance?

c) Am I making an impartial and sincere appraisal? Am I certain that my judgments have not been swayed by prejudices involving race, religion, caste political affiliations, personality traits or physical idiosyncrasies of the appraisee? For example am I favouring extroverts and biased against introverts who nevertheless achieve what is required in his or her quiet inimitable manner?

d) Am I prepared to listen to verbal or written appraisals made by my predecessor or predecessors which may be incorporated in 'handing-over-notes' (during changes of the superintendency of the plantation) without the knowledge of its bas?

e) Am I confident that I am not placing over emphasis on the subordinate's current performance without giving consideration or underestimating the accrued evidence of his or her past performance in the plantation I am responsible for, or even on other plantations the appraisee has worked in the past?

f) Have I established a consistency between my oral and written appraisals?

g) Am I certain that I have not contributed to the failure of the appraisee by not giving the individual proper instructions, guidance, support, encouragement and access to the resources or means the person required?

It is a rare superintendent who can honestly respond to all these questions satisfactorily. If a superintendent is not confident with his capability to conduct appraisals he should cultivate a suitable systematic meaningful appraisal system in his own style which will be equally good as other systems of appraisal and just as effective. He should however, as in other avenues of managerial approaches, keep the appraisal system as simple as possible.

Techniques of Performance Appraisal

Management by Objectives (MBO)

The aim of Management by Objectives was first initiated by Peter Drucker. The aim of Management by Objectives is to shift appraisal from personality to performance. It is a system through which a plantation superintendent could agree on objectives with their subordinates and review the results against the objectives.

"An effective management must direct the vision and efforts of all managers towards a common goal. It must ensure that the individual manager understands what results are demanded of him. It must ensure that the superior understands what to expect of each of his subordinate managers. It must motivate each manager to maximum efforts in the right direction. And while encouraging high standards of workmanship, it must make them the means to an end of business performance rather than the ends in themselves." Drucker, Peter. The Practice of Management. Harper and Brothers New York 1954.

What is required in Management by Objectives is the common sense submission that: 'if people know where to go, they will get there, eventually'. To this hypothesis should be added another idea that: 'people will be more enthusiastic to do something they are thorough about on their own initiative, rather than have it imposed upon them.'

In Management by Objectives a superintendent and his subordinate should adopt the following.

a) Agree upon mutually, the objectives and standards of performance the individual subordinate should achieve.

b) Review such performance and the results obtained through such performance and agree where attention is required and in what manner such remedial measures are taken.

c) Agree mutually on new objectives or targets and standards of performance.

In actual practice, Management by Objectives tend to frequently end up like a veneration with attempts to support it by superfluous paper work. Managers attempt to quantify Management by Objectives which cannot be quantified. In their attempts to motivate subordinates managers tend to demotivate them. In addition few managers like formal appraisal schemes, regarding them as a waste of time. In these negative approaches it is unlikely that managers would perform their task in its correct perspective.
Performance Appraisal should not be treated as a periodical compulsory observance. Top management should convince their plantation superintendents that appraisal should be a natural, continuous and simplified process to strengthen managerial efficiency and should not be allowed to deteriorate into a meaningless hub of filling forms and following abortive procedures. "As in all areas of management, there is an unfortunate tendency for the form (or rather its completion) to become the objective of the exercise. A high level of commitment is required for the development of an appraisal scheme and to operate it effectively. It is wasteful to attempt to overcome a lack of commitment by an increase in documentation." 51 The task centered method of appraisal This method is connected with what an individual subordinate is actually doing and how he does it. This process is different in the appraisal by objectives in that it: a)	Does not take into consideration agreed targets. b)	Ignores the idea of periodical reviews as a method of assisting subordinates to learn how to improve their performance. In this context McGregor states: "The semi - annual or annual appraisal is not a particularly efficient stimulus to learning.
