What was good enough last year is no longer good enough this year. Many people will argue that their jobs can t be measured. The key is describing good performance with words, not necessarily measuring it with numbers. In every case, a good job can be described in such a way that it can be verified. Aim for verifiable performance standards.
Numbers just happen to be easy to verify.
In spite of the manager s good-faith efforts to maintain a fair, objective, and impartial manner in writing every appraisal, errors in judgment can arise when one individual observes and evaluates another. Psychologists define rating errors technically as, the difference between the output of a human judgment process and that of an objective, accurate assessment uncolored by bias, prejudice, or other subjective, extraneous influences. What makes rating errors so difficult to correct is that raters are unaware that they are making them. The result is an employee who is inappropriately retained, terminated, promoted, demoted, or transferred. The tendency of a manager to make an initial positive or negative judgment of an employee and allow that first impression to color or distort later information.