Performance Appraisal

Roles and Responsibilities in the Evaluation Process

Quality control is one primary role and responsibility of the police department during the evaluation process. Quality control happens right from the trial period to determine the rookie’s suitability for the service. Senior officers are also evaluated once a year or based on a timeline set by the police department for their job performance. Police managers and experienced first-line supervisors use the probation period to screen the recruits’ suitability for the job. The probation period provides the appropriate time to evaluate the new employees’ abilities and characters. It also offers the opportunity to assess the recruits’ ability to cope with the police work’s demands and identify deficiencies that manifest only under actual working conditions. The sergeant’s role and responsibilities as a first-line supervisor during the evaluation process is to appraise all the line personnel (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017). Continuing quality control, if done correctly, ensures high standards of performance within the police force.

Institutional Support Needed For Performance Appraisals

The most critical institutional support during the performance appraisal process is the integrity and the dedication of those promoted to the rank of sergeants. The success of the performance appraisal lies squarely with them, the knowledge, specialized training to carry out the job, maturity level, and human skills. The sergeants’ decisions must reflect sound and fair judgment while their actions firm and golden. The police department must ensure that the supervisors are adequately trained to identify common errors and develop strategies to eliminate the errors and their impact on the appraisal process during the appraisal process. Several forms of errors are potential during the appraisal process, including the mistake of leniency, error of bias, error of central tendency, among others, and a police department serious on making the evaluation process work must train the raters on how to spot and manage these errors, ensuring that the supervisors evade some of the obvious pitfalls (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017).

The Best Methods of Appraisal If I Were First-Line Supervisor

The method of appraisal I would adopt as a first-line supervisor is a management by objective (MBO). Even though MBO is a new method to the performance evaluation process, it is the way to go for the future. The approach identifies exact personnel to perform specific tasks at a given time according to the allocation of prevailing resources. MBO is a future-oriented appraisal technique where the first-line manager focuses mainly on the organization’s future instead of stressing the past. The first-line supervisors get together their employees to map out the future objectives and goals aligned to the organization’s mission and then collaborate to develop the objectives and goals, assess the success, and mutually acceptable timeframes. Performance review is done regularly to consider if the employee is on track (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017). The approach emphasizes teamwork and collaboration, which is the future of organizations. Collaboration is critical for an organization as it helps to generate quality ideas, influential work culture and employee satisfaction by fostering productive dialogue (Howard et al. 2016). Collaboration improves communication and creates a judgement-free and healthy work environment (Raziq & Maulabakhsh, 2015). It facilitates the free flow of information within the organization and increases employee efficiency and productivity.

Six Human Errors

The error of Leniency: The error occurs due to people’s tendency to give others the benefit of the doubt, assessing on-the-job performance outside what the situations warrant. Police supervisors accede to the same pressure, the need to avoid interpersonal conflicts, desire to be popular, shielding one’s ego from criticisms, and many others (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017). This might compromise the appraisal process as the supervisor attempt to protect less talented and underperforming employees.

Central Tendency error occurs when more employees are rated closer to the mean as average on the evaluation scales (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017). This can be disastrous when the true goal of the appraisal fails to satisfy on-the-job performance, forcing many people to the artificial group of the “average.”

The Halo Effect: This is where the supervisor uses just one outstanding critical incident or a characteristic, either positive or negative shape the general rating of the employee. The supervisor formulates a judgment that the employee is good or poor and then adjusts all ratings to that one judgment (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017).  It is detrimental to the appraisal process because it does not recognize several other features that contribute to performance and is biased.

The Error of Bias: This involves mainly personal bias where the supervisor rate their friends and those they know higher than can rationally be justified (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017). This is detrimental to the appraisal process because it deviates from on-the-job performance to emotional issues.

The Contrast Error: This happens when a supervisor judges employees based on their expectations and aspirations. An officer who vicariously meets the personal needs of the supervisor is rated higher than others regardless of performance (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017). This is detrimental to the appraisal process because it shifts the evaluation to emotion-based instead of performance-based.

Recency Error: This error occurs when an employee’s assessment is based mainly on recent and recalled behavior before the evaluation (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017). This is bad for the appraisal process as it does not account for employees’ performance throughout the year, and the supervisor may fail to document employee performance throughout the period allocated for evaluation.

Features To Increase the Validity and Reliability of Performance Appraisals

• Using clear-cut rules, policies, and procedures designed mainly to guide the performance evaluation process.
• Using single but valid performance evaluation tools
• Training the supervisors on how to collect and analyze objective data
• Encourage active participation of individuals taking part in the evaluation process
• The management must be committed to adopting correct personnel decisions on data generated from the performance appraisal process (Miller, More, & Braswell, 2017). 

References

Howard, M., Steensma, H. K., Lyles, M., & Dhanaraj, C. (2016). Learning to collaborate through collaboration: How allying with expert firms influences collaborative innovation within novice firms. Strategic Management Journal, 37(10), 2092-2103.

Miller, L. S., More, H. W., & Braswell, M. C. (2017). Effective police supervision. Routledge.

Raziq, A., & Maulabakhsh, R. (2015). Impact of working environment on job satisfaction. Procedia Economics and Finance, 23, 717-725.