PMS: Appraiser Over-Rated or Reviewer Over Acted?

Reviewer rejected the PMS submission for the 3rd times and advised appraiser to reduce the rating of few subordinates quoting the reason as over-rating? Appraiser stunned!

In the first place, the Reviewer has no right to 'instruct' the appraisers to re-rate, let alone down-rating what has been done. Under this situation, the appraisers were no longer independent but under the great influence of the Reviewer. In real sense, the Reviewer acting as such is actually going over board his defined duties and responsibilities, thus interrupting the accuracy and fairness of performance appraisal.

Another upsetting issue was the way rejection was done. It was rejection by selection. Take for instances this real anecdote. Staff 'P' and Staff 'S' earned KPI rating 2.7 and 2.87 respectively. Why was 'S' rejected and not 'P' when both competencies were rated 1.4 despite S earned more KPI weigthage than P? We are not saying the Reviewer was racist as P was his 'clan' but favoritism is more obvious.

In any organisation, Managers are responsible for ensuring justice in the workplace. They should be fair in making decision related to HR activities like training, tasking and assigning responsibilities. Therefore, to be effective, bosses must behave fairly and make sure others are convinced of their fairness especially when conducting performance appraisal among the subordinates.

I agree not all bosses can defined and practise fairness and equity in performance appraisal. Let say in simple word: Fairness and equity in performance appraisal can best be defined as the quality of being fair in a formal situation where no one person has an unfair advantage in identifying, measuring and managing staff performance. Formal situation in this sense mean to put aside any relationship or misunderstandings with the person being appraised.

We must understand the undeniable fact that employees' perception of fairness in the implementation of performance appraisal is more important than the accuracy of the system. Otherwise it has negative outcome.

I still believed that there are 3 elements of justice that need to be upheld during the implementation of appraisal. They are Distributive , Procedural and Interactive justice.

Code: 171