Disappointing Interventions and Weak Criteria: Carving Out a Solution Is Still Possible

In their focal article, Adler and his colleagues (2016) elaborate on the pros and cons of abolishing the performance appraisal process in organizations. Sherman-Garr (2014) contends that this trend is on the rise because both managers—the raters—and their subordinates—the ratees—disdain performance scores. Employees feel that performance ratings do not reflect their actual performance, and therefore they do not gain the rewards they merit. Conversely, their supervisors/managers experience a great deal of frustration because the improvement of employee performance does not match up to the excessive time and effort invested in the appraisal process, making the whole process ineffective and inefficient. We agree that performance appraisals, specifically the practice of assigning performance ratings, appear to be a disliked and ineffective human resource function. However, we do not agree that goal attainment should be used in place of performance ratings; rating format and rater training represent “disappointing interventions†and, most of all, only “weak†criteria exist for performance ratings.