Fred Nickols
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Fred Nickols - writer, consultant and former executive - is the managing partner of Distance Consulting LLC. He specializes in improving the performance and productivity of people, processes and organizations. Fred has authored almost 100 articles and they are available free on his web site. He may be contacted by email at fred@nickols.us.
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Arguments in defense of performance appraisal systems inevitably point to their supposed benefits or raise questions about how certain aspects of managing performance could be handled without such a system. This paper sets forth a number of ways those aspects of managing performance can be handled - without having to resort to a performance appraisal system.
In this article, the author points out that the hard costs of operating formal performance appraisal systems are measured in billions of dollars annually and that the soft costs might be even higher. The primary offsets to these costs are the purported benefits of performance appraisal systems. Upon inspection, these appear to range from non-existent to minimal.
This paper argues that critics of performance appraisal systems and those who propose abolishing or scrapping them are not likely to meet with much success because the key benefit of appraisal systems is that they shore up a hierarchical system of managerial authority; they give managers control over the carrots and sticks in what is essentially a carrot-and-stick management system. Managers are no more likely to relinquish this control than Simon Legree would be likely to surrender his whip.
