1. Ratings are past oriented—The goals of performance management are to maintain good performance, correct current performance, and improve future performance.
2. What is measured is not always what is rated—Many instruments are designed with seven to ten indices that do not reflect the actual content of the position or the expertise of the individual employee.
3. Describing and measuring what is “good” is often difficult to define within the constraints of an appraisal form. What is considered “good” varies greatly.
4. Supervisors do not always keep accurate records of performance, and therefore generalize good and bad performance. Most appraisals use a sample of performance, highlighting the major events and problem events, but ignoring consistent, positive performance over time.
5. Rater biases are well documented. There are almost a dozen known phenomena that prove supervisors tend to rate employees inaccurately because of subconscious tendencies.
6. Ratings are commonly based upon the supervisor’s assessment alone. Employees have information that the supervisor does not and are present one hundred percent of the time. Therefore, employees need input into the performance management process.
7. Ratings are often inflated conflict avoidance or encouragement for poor performers is among the many reasons why ratings are inflated.
8. Raters may rate some higher or lower than others for the same performance. What is “good” not only varies by who is rating the performance, but also by the employee being rated.
9. Misuse of the idea that nobody is perfect. Managers feel an obligation to rate some employees lower so that it appears that they are properly supervising by identifying areas of improvement, even when it is not warranted.
10. Not all work activities that are important are found on ratings scales.
11. Different jobs often require different rating scales.
12. Rating scales sometimes do not include behavioral factors, which are often as important as performance indices
