Current practices in performance appraisal.

Area of Science:

• Human Resources Management
• Organizational Psychology
• Social Work Administration

Background:

• Performance appraisal is crucial for employee development and organizational effectiveness.
• Traditional methods like essays and rating scales are common in social service agencies.
• The results-oriented approach is recognized in management literature as highly effective.

Purpose of the Study:

• To survey current performance appraisal methods in private voluntary social service agencies.
• To identify the most frequently used performance appraisal techniques.
• To explore the perceived purposes of performance appraisal within these agencies.

Main Methods:

• Survey of 196 private voluntary social service agencies.
• Analysis of reported performance appraisal methods, focusing on essays, rating scales, and results-oriented approaches.

Main Results:

• Essays and rating scales are the most prevalent performance appraisal methods.
• The results-oriented performance appraisal method is not widely adopted.
• Agencies primarily use performance appraisal for performance improvement and salary adjustments.

Conclusions:

• There is a gap between recommended best practices (results-oriented appraisal) and actual usage in social service agencies.
• Further exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of various appraisal methods is warranted.
• Emphasis on implementing the results-oriented method could enhance employee evaluation in human service organizations.