Vocational appraisals: differences between individual and team evaluation systems

¶ … Vocational Appraisals

Differences between Individual Appraisals Team Appraisals

The main difference between individual appraisals and team appraisals is simply that the former need only evaluate the performance of a single individual while the latter must evaluate the performance of a team composed of multiple individuals. The appraisal of individual workers is one-dimensional because it involves evaluating only the work of one person. By contrast, team performance involves the individual performance of each team member as well as the complex relationships among the team members.

Difficulties of Evaluating Team Performance

The principal difficulty of evaluating team performance is that it is much more complicated to understand all of the factors and influences reflected in the outcome of team collaboration than the factors responsible for individual performance. In many respects, good team performance can hide poor individual performance and poor team performance can obscure good individual performance.

Team Motivations and Expectations

To a certain extent, working in teams can result in lower performance of certain individual team members because they may be motivated only by the fear of poor appraisals. In their case, working within a team can provide an opportunity to "coast" by relying on fellow team members. That is why establishing clear expectations at the outset is a fundamental necessity within any team. In that regard, each team member must have a clear responsibility within the team so that there is sufficient incentive and personal accountability to ensure a fair effort on the part of all team members.