How does your organization's performance appraisal system
measure up?
 

• Does it resist efforts to distort ratings?
• Does it limit accountability to the range of performance
     that was feasible to achieve?
• Is it capable of assessing the severity of situational constraints
     on each of a job's functions and on the job as a whole?
• Does it produce scores that are directly comparable across all jobs?
• Is it sensitive to differences both in the average levels that workers
     achieved and in how consistently they achieved those levels?
• Does it assess the performance and not the person?
     (If your system uses competencies and/or traits, your answer
     should be "no".)
• Does it allow the content of each appraisal to be tailored to the
     specific functions that each worker performed during each
     appraisal period?
• Does it rate each job function separately on each relevant criterion
     of effectiveness (e.g., quality, timeliness, etc.) rather than on the
     overall performance of the job function?
• Does it allow the precise weighting of the relative importance of
     each job function in each ratee's job during the period under
     consideration?
• Does it offer the capability to conduct multisource appraisals that
     allow for the separate designation and weighting of raters
     for each job function?
• Does it offer the capability to generate outcome-focused roadmaps
     for guiding future performance to higher levels?
• Is it web-based for anytime-anywhere utilization? 

If your answer was "no" to more than one of these questions, then
your organization's appraisal system is obsolete. A new method has
arrived which measures up to all of the these criteria.

Performance Distribution Assessment (PDA):

• The first truly new appraisal method in 50 years.
• In addition to offering all the capabilities mentioned in the questions
  posed above, consider these further capabilities:
   
  • generates scores on overall performance and on 6 generic
       criteria (i.e., quality, quantity, timeliness, cost effectiveness,
       interpersonal impact, and need for supervision) that can be
       compared across all workers, jobs, work units, and even
       organizations. Such scores are ideal for allocating bonuses
       and merit raises and for selecting among internal candidates
       for promotion. No other appraisal system generates scores
       that can even be compared across people within the same job!
  • generates scores that can be aggregated to any level, thereby
       permitting comparisons between teams, work units, occupations,
       organizational levels, and entire organizations.
  • generates scores on each of a job's functions, and on each relevant
       criterion of effectiveness (e.g., quality, timeliness) within each
       job function.

Is any other appraisal method even capable of offering
the capabilities mentioned in the questions posed above?  

Emphatically, no! If your organization's appraisal system is based on
any of the following methods, it is incapable of adequately assessing
performance or of serving as a basis for performance management:

• Graphic Rating Scales
• Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS)
• Ranking
• Forced Distribution
• Behavioral Observation Scales
• MBO-based Appraisal
• Narrative methods
   

The use of these performance appraisal methods has resulted in:

• the majority of employees subject to them perceiving their
     appraisals to be unfair and useless for improving their
     performance;
• management's lack of confidence in appraisal as a
     basis for decision-making;
• the inability of organizations to use aggregated appraisal data
     to guide the improvement of organizational effectiveness.

How does PDA compare to its competition?

Every competing appraisal offering is nothing more than one of the
fully discredited appraisal methods listed above, repackaged in a
fancy computerized interface. In other words, they are just high-tech
ways of repeating all the mistakes of the past.

What do the experts think of PDA?

"Simply stated, this is the best approach to performance appraisal,
a major breakthrough."

---Edward E. Lawler, III
   Distinguished Professor of Business,
       Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
   Director of the Center for Effective Organizations
   Named by Business Week as one of the top-six gurus
       in the field of management

"For organizations interested in fair, accurate, and legally defensible
 performance appraisal, Performance Distribution Assessment is in a
 class by itself, a triumph of groundbreaking theory development,
 painstaking empirical testing, and masterful software engineering.
 PDA will outperform any other method in measuring and improving true
 performance."

---H. John Bernardin
   University Research Professor,
        Dept. of Management & International Business
        Florida Atlantic University
   Former Chair, Division of Personnel/Human Resources,
        Academy of Management
   Co-author of most widely used textbook on performance appraisal

"I have watched the evolution of Dr. Kane's ideas for over two decades.
 From what I know of the other internet-based performance appraisal and
 management products out there, it seems certain that the PDA system
 is the best such product available."

---Joyce Hogan
   President, Hogan Assessment Systems
   Professor of Psychology, University of Tulsa
   Former Editor, Human Performance