Abstract

 Performance Appraisal of the team is a core element of administration to achieve the required objectives of an organization. The study was intended to measure the effectiveness of the existing performance appraisal system towards professional excellence of secondary school teachers as perceived by their principals. Two hundred secondary school principals were found available as a sample to mark the questionnaire. The researcher himself developed a questionnaire for the principals to seek their opinions on the present performance appraisal system. The data collected were analyzed with descriptive statistics. It was found that the effectiveness of the system is of moderate level in Punjab. The performance appraisal system contributed fifty-nine per cent to the professional excellence of the teachers. Some strong recommendations were also written on the basis of findings to see the performance appraisal system more effective

Key Words

Performance Appraisal System, Secondary School Teacher, Professional Excellence, Principal, Punjab

Introduction

Every organization recruits the workforce as needed and required to get the work done just well in time. Besides this, the management also tends to evaluate the performance of each individual towards better results. The Manager imposes certain duties upon his employees to be accomplished with due interest and pleasure.

Organizations, therefore, set standards of performance and obligations which employees are expected towards organizational growth and increased productivity. Consequently, management needs to determine the employees that require training, transfer as well as those that are due for promotion, or salary increase (Tauqeer, 2012). And this is done through performance appraisal. Performance appraisal is the periodic and systematic assessment of the work done by an employee. One of the most crucial and sensitive task that a manager or controlling officer performs in any organization is that of measuring the work contribution of individual workers to the achievement of organizational objectives, Therefore, good and effective performance appraisal program is an indispensable managerial tool to reward or punish the employees on the basis of their performance. It enables the management to discriminate between inefficient and efficient workers based on their performance. In reviewing the work of writers on the subject, it is first necessary to discuss the purposes of and necessity for performance appraisals in public and private organizations.

Performance, in the context of a professional job, may refer to two things:

1. The results that employees achieve on the job - the outcomes, consequences, and outputs.

2. Whatever they do that affects those results - their behavior and actions.

Having defined performance, we go on to define “evaluation" as follows:

    “Evaluation implies the determination of or fixing the value of, that being evaluated. It involves the examination or judgment of something with respect to a standard or criterion. Performance Evaluation then refers to the determination of or fixing the value of performance in relation to a standard of performance.’’

A brief discussion of the evaluation process itself also is useful. Typically, the performance evaluation process involves a formal discussion between a superior and a subordinate to discover how the subordinate is presently performing on the job and how the subordinate can perform more effectively in the future so that the subordinate, the superior, and the organization all benefit   (Ansar, 2018).

The researchers contend that the final purpose of performance appraisal is to develop people who are steadily growing, enlarging their skills, and learning new and better ways of doing things. They posit, therefore, that an organization in which effective performance appraisal is the rule rarely stands still or moves backwards, because effective appraisal develops people who move forward, and forward-moving people make forward-moving organizations (Appelbaum,2018).

The essence of performance appraisal is to be able to relate individual worker performance with a pre-determined objective (Cascio, 2018). This comparison of where the employee is in relation to where he or she ought to be with respect to job performance accounts for individual output assessment. This comparison is absolutely necessary for assessing current as well as predicting future levels of performance. Through this system, work-related behaviour is encouraged, while unrelated work behaviour is discouraged (Bacel, 2017). 

It is apparent, then, that performance evaluation is indispensable for two principal reasons:

1) Performance appraisal provides information for deciding how to allocate individuals to positions in the organization, and

2) Provides information to individuals who will aid them in becoming more effective performers

After considering the views of different writers and several public service review commissions reports, there emerges a general agreement on performance appraisal. There is an agreement, for example, that no satisfactory mechanistic ways of appraising performance exist which would avoid the use of one man's judgment about the performance of a subordinate. The traditional techniques of appraisal place the superior in the position of ‘playing God" in judging his subordinates. Getting together, the teachers should also be given a chance to write the PER of their principal on a single page and be submitted to the CEO confidentially (K.B. Khan, 2013).

Going through the available literature, none of the authors whose work I have read makes any case for uniform or universal appraisal system across organizations; this is because organizations differ from each other in the purpose for which they are established. A sophisticated system calls for an equally sophisticated method of appraisal (Einstein, 1999). 

Since performance results are to be retrieved periodically for personnel decisions and promotions, what is required to enhance productivity and mutual confidence among employees and management is an accurate record of each officer’s output which is not influenced by biased personal considerations such as personality traits, ethnic background, sex, or age. These are some of the problems addressed by the directorate of public instructions (Latham, 2012). 

A mechanism of appraising individual performance is necessary for any government or private organization to ensure the objectives of the organization are being achieved and the duties properly performed. By identifying potential skills or less than satisfactory performance, the performance appraisal becomes a basic source document for training and staff development as performance evaluations form a permanent part of an employee's record with a particular organization. Whenever personnel decisions are contemplated, the appraisal records should be retrieved and applied. The accurate storage of personnel records which are retrieved and applied in personnel decisions is a positive and fair approach in comparison to the practice in some organization where appraisals are made, recorded, filed, and forgotten (Qasim, 2018). When personnel decisions which involve discriminating among individuals are made without reference to these previously recorded evaluations, the purpose of performance appraisal (which is to improve employee performance and to reward such improved performance by promotions, merit and salary increases) is negated (Stone,2018).  

The major process involved under the present system of management is that the broad policies and programs are set by the top management. The "top management" in this case may be a Secretary Education or DPI (Director Public Instruction) Punjab.

This top decision on what to achieve within a particular period lays the foundation for other departmental arrangements regarding strategies which are necessary to realize set objectives. After policies are formulated at the top and branches are assigned specific tasks, the Manager or branch executives organize their departmental functions by meeting formally with their subordinate officers (Werther, 2017). Such meetings are utilized for mutual goal setting between Managers and their subordinates. A time period for completion is also agreed upon, and a milestone chart is drawn for each subordinate to enable the branch executive to keep track of developments. While subordinates are allowed the freedom to set their own goals and strategies for achieving results, they are guided by a superior who ensures that the goals relate to the objectives of the organization. When this is done, the criteria for measuring and evaluating performance are also agreed upon. During the time set for realizing the objectives, the Manager and subordinates get together at periodic intervals to evaluate progress made toward the agreed-upon goals. At such meetings, new or modified goals are made for the ensuing period. Here, the superior play a supportive role by advising and encouraging subordinates when they run into difficulties. In the process of evaluating the subordinates’ performance under Management by Objectives, the superior play less the "role of a judge" as in the conventional appraisal and more the role of one who assists subordinates in attaining their goals or targets.

In terms of its applicability to various disciplines, the concept of management by objectives is known to succeed more in the technical, professional, supervisory, and executive fields. When the duties and responsibilities of workers are imposed upon them by higher management, they have no leeway for participating in a mutual goal-setting arrangement under management by objectives.

Here the rewards and punishments are linked with individual performance relative to organizational goals. Employees are not rewarded for being good dressers, good guys or good talkers, but because they achieve the objectives of the organization. It is pertinent to state here that under MBO (Management by Objectives), goals and objectives are set to reflect the organizational mission. This focus ignores the setting and realization of personal goals and objectives by employees. The practice suggests that employees always have to adapt themselves to satisfy the requirements of the organization.

Performance appraisal is a necessity in all organizations, given the fact that decisions have to be made on employees regarding merit, pay increases, promotions, training, transfers, demotions and suspension from duty. Given that such decisions are taken by top management officials who do not know individual employees, a system is required that provides accurate records of performance to serve as a guide to decision-makers. Communication about the specifics of performance, both positive and negative, should be bold and apparent (Samar,2014)

It is important to stay in touch with performance throughout the year so that there will be no surprises, no drastic effort to catch up on the recording of incidents of performance, and little if any, new information that has to be communicated during a year-end appraisal. Rather, the emphasis should be placed on integrating and evaluating the specific aspects of performance previously observed and discussed during the course of the year.

The major problem that may arise in performance appraisal is lack of objectivity while writing reports on the performance of subordinate employees. This problem is more wide spread in the traditional appraisal system. This system creates loopholes for managers and raters since it lacks any feedback mechanism for relating to employees how they have performed during the reporting period. Consequently, the supervisors and top management officials who act as judges are free to write damaging remarks on otherwise effective employees, while the apparent low or substandard performers may earn excellent ratings. 

The DPI (S.E) discovered flaws with the traditional confidential report system in Punjab and encouraged the adoption of an open reporting system patterned on MBO guidelines. While the conventional system of performance evaluation is done in secret and does not provide for drawing the attention of subordinates to their shortcomings, the open reporting system provides that performance ratings should be done in the open to enable the subordinates to know where they stand regarding their performance. When this principle of openness is upheld, performance reports become much more objective. The open reporting system ensures that effective performers be further encouraged while remedial actions are taken to encourage substandard performers to avoid further degeneration in performance. These are the main virtues identified in the open system of performance evaluation (Habib, 2017). 

Punjab School Education Department uses the confidential annual performance evaluation system for appraising the performance of its employees. Under this system, the heads of the various departments are charged with assuring that performance reports are written on their subordinate employees annually. Performance report writing begins with the distribution of evaluation forms known as PER from central administration to all heads of departments for circulation among their subordinate officers. These forms are to be completed in part one by employees on salary grade BPS -16 and above. Part-I of the evaluation form contains personal details of the employee such as Department/office, name, National Identity Card number, date of birth, the post held during the reporting period, list of targets achieved, training received, a brief description of main duties. Other details include the date of the entry in government service, current substantive grade when appointed to such grades, course/s of instruction undertaken during the period of the report, reasons of failure to achieve the targets. Part-I also asks two questions to be answered by the subordinates.

1. During the period under report, do you believe that you have made any exceptional contribution with significant benefits to the public? 

2. What can be done to make you more effective?




Finally, the employee sign verifying his particulars and the form is forwarded to the reporting officer who completes part-II of the form. This second part contains several evaluation parameters to be assessed on a three-point scale from A to C. A is awarded on ‘very good, B for ‘satisfactory’ and C for ‘unsatisfactory’ performance respectively. The reporting officer also ticks the relevant columns showing his subordinate is ‘honest’ or ‘corrupt’. Finally, the same form is sent to the countersigning officer, confidentially. The reporting officers are required to justify such recommendations by concrete reasons. Where necessary, additional information not contained in the body of the form is provided to support the reporting officer's assessments. At this stage, the officer whose performance is being evaluated has no further access to the report form. Once these formalities are completed, the evaluation forms are returned to the central administration for storage and eventual retrieval. The ever-increasing demand for proper accountability by high educational institutions has led to a growing prominence on performance appraisal for the teaching team.

Statement of the Problem

Since our Punjab school education department employs personnel in thousands, the monitoring of individual output is essential. Output determination is the function of performance appraisal, which is carried out periodically to assess the contribution of each person under Evaluation. It is naturally recognized that a man does complete his assignment when he is too much interested in getting it done, or he finds himself under observation by a controlling authority. The controlling authority is the immediate boss having a superior position in an organization.  

These periodic ratings, if carried out in an effective manner, should uncover each officer's strengths and weaknesses and help in assessing the extent to which an officer has consistently observed or departed from job requirements. Here the performance judgment and decisive rewards and punishments can determine the professional excellence among the teaching staff.

As our education department is responsible to the government for its operations, the issues of productivity, effectiveness regarding the students’ future are vital considerations in assessing overall progress of the teaching staff. Performance appraisal provides a good opportunity to formally identify employees’ achievements and contributions to the organization and to ensure that a clear link is recognized and maintained between performance and reward. Thus, one of the core objectives of performance appraisal is to reward for good performance and address weaknesses. Similarly, it provides potent feedback and lesson for teachers and gives the school principals and district education authority a constructive framework to review the teacher performance. Performance Appraisal system has a unique importance in an educational set up.

Since organizations do not operate in a vacuum, organizational performance cannot be evaluated without, first of all, evaluating the performance of an individual officer within it. The main statement of the problem is to seek the perceptions of headteachers about the effectiveness of present performance appraisal system to check and improve the performance of secondary school teachers working in government secondary schools of the Punjab province. This paper will examine the effectiveness of the performance appraisal system and how this influences the employees to do better for their professional excellence. 

Research Questions

For purposes of examining the performance appraisal system and the utilization of appraisal results in the education department, the following guiding research questions were made:

1. What is the level of effectiveness of the performance appraisal system set for the government secondary school teachers in Punjab? 

2. What is the contribution of the performance appraisal system towards the professional excellence of the teachers?

Research Methodology

Population and Sample of the Study 




The population for the study consisted of all the principals working in government secondary schools of the Punjab province. Two hundred principals easily available as sample marked the questionnaire provided by the researcher.




Research Instrument

 

The researcher developed a reliable questionnaire on a 5-point Likert scale to measure the performance appraisal system and professional excellence of the teachers.




Data Collection

 

The required data were collected through e-mails; postal services besides the researchers held joyful meetings with fourteen principals to get marked his questionnaire.

Data Analysis

 

The collected was analyzed through descriptive statistics and regressions to answer the research questions 

Results

To answer the research questions, the collected data was entered into SPSS, analyzed and interpreted as follows:

 

Research Question 1: What is the level of effectiveness of the performance appraisal system set for the government secondary school teachers in Punjab?

 

Table1. Level of Performance Appraisal System as perceived by the Principals

 

S. No	Statement	Mean	SD
1	The performance appraisal system has been developed Parallel to the job description of teachers	3.1	0.76
2	The appraisal process is fair and discourages favouritism	2.9	0.67
3	The assessment criteria are well structured with all necessary functions to be measured by the reporting officer	2.2	0.55
4	Teachers are promoted or punished on the basis of PER	3.7	0.65
5	Key elements (personality, performance &results) have been identified in the appraisal system clearly	3.5	0.79

 

Table 1 shows that the effectiveness of performance appraisal system designed for the secondary school teachers in Punjab is of moderate level. The key elements of the teacher performance have been included in the system as needed and desired. The assessment criteria are poorly structured comparatively in the present performance appraisal system. The effectiveness of the system is low to some extent as the teachers succeed to achieve the undue favour by the reporting officer.

 

Research Question 2: What is the contribution of the performance appraisal system towards the professional excellence of the teachers?

 

Table 2. Linear Regression Analysis of Performance Appraisal System with Professional Excellence

 

Model	R	R²	Adjusted R²	Std. Error of the Estimate
1	.768	.590	.599	11.291

Predictor: (Constant), Performance Appraisal System

Table 2 explains the level of the effect of the PAS performance appraisal system on the professional excellence of teachers working in government secondary schools. Linear regression statistical technique was applied, and results are reported. There was found a significant effect of PAS on teacher performance at the secondary school level. The results of the above table report that the value of R² =.590, which is highly significant at p< .001. The performance appraisal practices taken together accounted for 59% (R² = .590) to the variance of professional excellence of the teachers. The system significantly contributes to better teacher performance. If there is no performance appraisal system, then teachers will not work as needed and required for the good results of students in the annual exam. Moreover, the teachers don’t intend to work properly if not appraised in a comprehensive way. So, our performance appraisal system PAS is a popular and bold determinant of the professional excellence of schoolteachers

Conclusions

Based upon the results of this study, it is concluded a well-structured performance appraisal system of moderate effectiveness exists in Punjab to appraise the performance of secondary school teachers’ SSTs. The appraisal system must be clear and transparent. No personal prejudices and social disputes are valued when writing the PER of a teacher. Some principals intimidate and punish the subordinates on the grounds of likes and dislikes. Performance appraisal benefits both the school system and the teachers whose performance is appraised. The teachers with low performance try to improve themselves beside the department uses the record to terminate the useless teachers and to have the fresh induction of target-oriented teachers. The assessment criterion is not well structured. The appraisal system shows likes/dislikes are measured by the reporting officer in certain cases. Some elements of PER are not related to the job description of the teachers. Besides these observations, the effectiveness of the performance appraisal system is of moderate level in Punjab. The performance appraisal practices taken together accounted for 59% (R² = .590) to the variance of professional excellence of the teacher. Here the appraisal system has been shown as a good predictor of professional excellence of the teachers. Having the needful check and balance on their performance, the teachers may be forced to show better professional excellence.

Recommendations

It is well recognized and accepted there must be a well-defined system to evaluate the performance of employees to get them promoted or punished. Performance appraisal system has become a core element of human resource management in the running life of an organization. When employees show the results of their performance, they should be encouraged to do better for their promotion. The appraisal must be continued on monthly basis and certain targets must be imposed on the employees to achieve within a limited time. The performance evaluation reports of all the employees must be displayed on the notice board to excite the employees for competitions in this regard. The school must teach at least one subject of his good choice parallel to duties. The need of study was necessitated by the fact that there are some drawbacks in the performance appraisal system set for the secondary school students in Punjab. Hence the researcher chose the topic so as to identify and discuss the influence of performance appraisal system on the professional excellence of the teachers. As a guide, two research questions were formulated for the study. A questionnaire was designed and administered to the secondary school teachers within the area. Mean score, standard deviation and regression was used to answer the research questions accordingly. From the analysis of data, the views of the teachers were found. It was noted that good patterns are not adhered to by the principals. The researcher with regard to the findings recommended the conventional performance appraisal system with a laid down policy of the education department on a formal procedure to be followed in appraising the schoolteachers. This is open reporting system whereby a teacher is given an opportunity to see the remarks of reporting officer to minimize bias, personal prejudices and favoritism. The performance appraisal of the teachers should be made by the principal who know more about the teacher performance than anyone else in the education department. The higher authority should not fit any remarks on the performance evaluation report. They may only see the reports and forwarded for promotion or punishment. 

The principal who attains high administrative standards should be apprised while those who fail to adopt the patterns should be reprimanded. The above conclusions point to the flaws and limitations of the existing appraisal system in Punjab. Given the implication of these findings for motivation and overall productivity in this corporation, it is necessary to refine the existing system and to overcome the major problems encountered. The reporting officer should clearly recommend reward or punishment to be imposed upon the teacher under Evaluation. No undue favor, likes or dislikes be engrossed in this regard.

References

• Ansar, A. (2018). Performance and Happiness. Sial Publishers, Kashan, 2nd Edition
• Appelbaum, S. H., & Butt, D. (2018). Toxins in the workplace: effect on organizations and employees. Corporate Governance, 7(1), 17-28.
• Bacal, R. (2017). Performance Management. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Cascio, W. F. (2018). Applied psychology in human resource management (5th ed.).
• Einstein, W. O. and LeMere-Labonte, J. (1999). Performance appraisal: dilemma or desire? Sam Advanced Management Journal, 54 (2): 26-30.
• Habib, (2017). Achievements Vs Failure: How to Takeover? Ghadeer Publishers, Asfahan