STUDENT 1: John

Define appraisal problems and targets of intervention, plus what issues are seen today in appraisals?

There are a few key problems that tend to arise during appraisals. The biggest, in my opinion is the program not having a clear mission and vision laid out. Without this, evaluating the program will extremely difficult, think running a race without knowing where the finish line is. We tend to see this every few years during Wing change of commands at Air Force bases. A new Wing Commander comes in and for whatever reason they feel they always have to re-define the Wing’s Mission and Vision statement, even though the mission hasn’t changed for years or decades at the base.

Targets of intervention are how to get a program back on to the correct path it was intended to run. Think tanks or bringing in experts to possibly do a process improvement event are always good places to start. Alternatively, looking at recent assessments to find common tends of mistakes or miscues are be the best place to start addressing what needs to be changed to get back on track.

One big thing I see creating issues with appraisals today is the overwhelming access to information to the public. It seems as though it there are even the smallest concerns with a program and it goes public the world is set ablaze. In return, program mangers or other stakeholders have to acknowledge the issues and tend to take actions in a knee jerk manner instead of taking the time to review the evaluation, create multiple courses of correction actions and then select the best one in the interest of the program.

STUDENT 2:Aliimau

Define appraisal problems and targets of intervention, plus what issues are seen today in appraisals?

There are several appraisal problems that are usually met with during the process. Common issues such as bias evaluation, lack of documentation and data to reflect history of organization/employee, and of course it cost too much to do an evaluation. All of these starts from poor strategic planning. This is very vital to the success of the process, knowing what the goals and objective are and then coming up with a method to achieve this plan. One thing that needs to be understood is that the purpose of evaluating job performance is to uncover strengths, identify weakness and working on striking a balance between the two (Hudson, 2019). Not understanding the focus and purpose of evaluation is how the problem ensues and start fading from its true objective.

Like I stated before, the solution for appraisal problems is a good strong strategic plan. Develop good strategies to ensure that we never lose sight of the main goal of a good appraisal evaluation. It is important to have planning in place to ensure that the appraisal is targeting problems identified in the evaluation process so it can have an impact in the performance and efficiency of the program moving forward.

The biggest issue with appraisals today are inaccuracy, lack of knowledge, and appraisals are planned to meet the needs of the organization instead of tethering to the success of the employee. This in turn can develop a more knowledgeable, improved, and efficient worker. Lack of training,knowledge, and poor planning will result in an ineffective process. Ongoing program evaluation should be part of the program design and should be planned for, not only because it is required by regulation but to improve program effectiveness (United States Office of Personnel Management, 1999).

Reference:

United States Office of Personnel Management. (1999). Performance Management Practitioner Series. Evaluating Performance Appraisal Programs. Retrieved from https://edge.apus.edu/access/content/attachment/398189/Forums/20a0451f-3ac6-49b6-8f96-e8a3660ab29b/eval.pdf

Hudson, Anna. (2019). Performance Appraisal Problems and Solutions. Retrieved from https://www.scribd.com/document/266606767/Performance-Appraisal-Problems-and-Solutions