Graddick and Lane may be right. But how do you do a performance appraisal when you can’t get a good read on the job that the executive is doing in the organization. The head of a small computer software company may at times act as a cheerleader, clown or father figure in order to gain the commitment of his fifteen employees. A city manager may require the skills of a politician and negotiator, as well as those of a manager, to be effective in her job. The director of an insurance processing division in a large corporation may need to spend most of her time advocating at higher levels of the organization for new computer support services.
Even at lower levels of the organization, the job descriptions are often quite fluid or ill defined. An office manager, police officer or legal secretary may be very effective in all formal aspects of their jobs, yet each of them may be required to serve as counselor, mediator, strategist or social director. They may not be prepared for these auxiliary functions and may have a significant negative impact on their organization because they lack the requisite human relation skills, an appropriate attitude about working with people from many different cultures, or a keen sense of competition with colleagues. Their job requires that they do many things for which they were not hired and in which they have not subsequently been trained or educated. Should employees be held accountable for their performance in these emerging areas? Don’t employees have every reason to resent not only the imposition, but also the callous indifference of their superiors when they provide negative feedback about the employee’s performance in these imposed areas?
The complex job demands faced by many employees can rarely be formally acknowledged, let alone appraised, in today’s organizations. This is especially the case in an era of affirmative action. The leaders of most institutions are concerned about any evaluation procedure that opens the door to the unwanted influences of discrimination or inappropriate personal feelings on the appraisal of employee performance. Those who conduct performance appraisals must tread a very thin path between overly constricted evaluations of an employee’s performance and overly inclusive evaluations of imposed roles and responsibilities, and inappropriate aspects of an employee’s life.
