Performance Appraisal and Legal Implications
There are federal laws addressing fair employment practices, and this also concerns performance appraisal (PA). Discrimination can occur within predictions of performance and evaluations of job behaviors. The revision of many court cases has revealed the involvement of alleged discrimination which was often linked to the assessment of the employee’s job performance. Some of the laws which protect individuals against discrimination are “the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).” Lawsuits may also results from charges of an employer’s negligence, defamation, and/or misrepresentation. A few appraisal criteria to keep in mind for a legally sound PA is to keep the content of the appraisal objective, job-related, behavior-based, within the control of the ratee, and related to specific functions rather than a global assessment. Some appraisal procedure suggestions for a legally sound PA is to standardize operations, communicate formally with employees, provide information of performance deficits and give opportunities to employees to correct those deficits, give employees access to appraisal results, provide written instructions for the training of raters, and use multiple, diverse and unbiased raters. These are valuable but not exhaustive lists of recommendations for PAs.
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