Benefits of Performance Appraisals include Compliance Protection

A performance appraisal system, when properly managed, provides you with a means of measuring, maintaining, and improving your employee’s job performances. Through the job performance appraisal program, your company can:

1. Validate hiring decisions
2. Recognize employees' job performance strengths and weaknesses
3. Identify employees who are ready for promotion or greater responsibilities
4. Assess training needs

From a compliance perspective, you should be able to rely on performance appraisals to justify the full range of personnel decisions, including discipline and termination actions.

For example, if a performance appraisal reflects poor job performance by the employee and this employee is later terminated, the you can point to the performance appraisal to show the employee was not performing to standards. If, however, an employee with overall weak performance is given a good or even average appraisal, and the employee is later terminated without interim discipline, the performance appraisal will have the opposite result — the employee may use it to show the termination decision was not justified and instead, was based on a discriminatory or other unlawful factor.

A well designed and administered performance appraisal program can go far to protect employers from certain legal challenges to employment decisions.

Modern Business Associates frequently deals with performance appraisals. As a HR outsource organ, our clients rely on us to help them effectively deal with these kinds of topics including compliance protection.