The Government of Pakistan

"To imbed our values, we give our people 360-degree evaluations, with input from superiors, peers and subordinates. These are the roughest evaluations you can get, because people here think about themselves as they have never heard before". John F. Welch. This term paper pertains to the topic Performance Management. Our assignment is to analyze the Performance appraisal system currently being utilized by the Government of Pakistan. This process is a formal process in an organization where by each employee is evaluated to determine how he/she is performing.

Performance appraisals are specifically serves the following purposes; performances improvement, compensation adjustments, placement decision, training and development needs, career planning and development, staffing process, deficiencies, informational inaccuracies, job designs errors, to provide equal employment opportunity, overcome external challenges and providing feed back to Human Resources. A performance appraisal should be practical, standardized and job related. Performance appraisals are either future oriented or past oriented.

Past oriented appraisal methods include rating scales, checklist, force choice method, critical incident method, accomplishment records, behaviorally anchored rating scales, field review method, performance test observations and comparative evaluation approaches. The future appraisal systems include MBOs, essay appraisals, psychological appraisals and assessment centers. Review of Literature: The ACR (annual confidential report) is the performance appraisal used by the Government of Pakistan. There are two evaluation systems, which exist, side-by-side: formal and informal.

This ACR form is a type of Formal Performance evaluation. The Appraisal form is a tool consisting of nine parts that help the rater measure employee performance in various areas. The ACR is filled by the employee in part 1 and the reporting and countersigning officer. The factors affecting performance evaluation are government requirements, regulations, and laws. The government has investigated to determine if organizations discriminate against protected categories of employee in promotions, pay raises, and other rewards.

Performance evaluation is also a method for allocating such rewards. The ACR also stresses that feedback should be given to the officer being assessed on progress or otherwise should be noted. Part 9, 10 & 11 of the ACR thoroughly double-checks assessment of the employee and attempts to reduce bias. Summary: Part 1 is the data classification and it records personal details of the employees, including his qualification, description etc. Part 2,3 and 4 use the discrete rating scale, which falls under the past-oriented appraisal approaches.

It is a "subjective evaluation of an individual's performance along a scale from low to high"1. Part 5 uses two methodologies, The Field Essay Methodology in part 5a. 5b and 5c have elements of Critical Incident and Accomplishment within the field essay method. Part 6 uses the Comparative Approach methodology. Within this it employees the group order ranking method. Part 7 of the ACR does not use any specific methodology but just is a mean of ensuring that the assessment is fair and correct.

Part 8 avails the behaviorally anchored checklist. It is also a past oriented appraisal method. It is can be concluded that the ACR is deficient in the employee contribution to the appraisal, especially any form of self-appraisal. Therefore it is recommended that there should be a section involving the employee through self-analysis as well as the management's response to it. This can be achieved through the "self appraisal" and "MBO" methods.

The employee should be provided with the opportunity to review their appraisals also. Further a formal system of review or appeal should be available for appraisal disagreements. 5 Within the current ACR performance appraisal standards should be re-evaluated and established. Jobs should be bench marked. "Attention should be denoted to identifying those attributes relevant to job performance and defining them on the rating instrument so they can be as reliable and valid as the more elaborate measurement techniques. "