The Effectiveness of Employee Performance Appraisal System in Health Sector: Evidence from Iranian organizations

Abstract

Introduction: Performance appraisal is a formal process to review and improve the organizational performance of employees regularly. Despite the appropriate organizational frameworks for performance appraisal, they are not apparently addressing the operational realities of health care organizations. This study thus aimed to examine the effectiveness of the current performance appraisal system of employees at Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS) from the perspective of employees. Methods: The data were collected from 504 TUMS employees using researcher-developed questionnaire following the validation. It consisted of 46 questions covering such various dimensions as performance expectations, communication of performance objectives to employees, self-assessment, performance metrics, surveyors, and performance appraisal results. ANOVA, t-test, Post hoc and Tukey statistical tests were used during analysis process by SPSS 22. Results: The performance appraisal system was not found as effective as expected from the employees’ perspective and the scores for all its dimensions dropped below the average. The overall performance appraisal score was 2.71 (out of 5). There was also a significant correlation between the employees’ education and organizational job group and the score of performance appraisal (p<0.0001). Conclusion: The current appraisal system according to the results is not well functioning. Therefore, it seems necessary to make urgent changes. The lack of active participation from employees and managers in performance appraisal development process, and the subsequent low motivation to improve their performance seems to be a persistent challenge. A fairly desirable solution might be to decentralize the appraisal processes rendering more authority to managers and supervisors along with empowering managers.

Relationship Between Fairness of Performance Appraisal and Nurses' Work Motivation

“…Also, this may be attributed to work load, lack of time, lack of supervisors' communication skills, fear of upsetting colleagues, fear of damaging professional relationships, defensive behaviour and resistance of nurses when receiving feedback. This result was consistent with researches conducted by van Tjahjono et al (2020) , Majidi et al, (2021) , Homauni et al, (2021) and Mok and Yie, (2021) indicated that nurses perceived low level of performance appraisal fairness and performance feedback had the lowest average score and concluded that Health workers' performance appraisal is facing a number of challenges, including ineffectiveness of appraisal data for performance improvement, lack of immediate and constructive feedback and unfair performance appraisal.…”

“…Motivation meets the needs of the staff, improve communication and interpersonal relationship between manger and nurse's, increase self-esteem and sense of belonging to organization, increase staff retention (Mohammad, Elliethey, Elzohairy, 2021). Motivated nurses have high levels of morale and commitment towards the organization and its goals and objectives, motivation reduces turnover and reduces the need for constant induction of new staff and help marketing of organization (Homauni et al, 2021). Researchers have suggested that nurses and supervisors hold negative views on the appraisal process and its degree of fairness.…”