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ACCA Applied Knowledge · Business and Technology · Review and appraisal of individual performance

Several staff in a team complain that their manager's appraisals are based almost entirely on the last six weeks of their work, ignoring earlier good or poor performance. Which appraisal technique would best reduce this problem?

Keeping a continuous record of critical incidents through the year best reduces recency bias. Documented examples from the whole period give the appraiser evidence beyond recent events, whereas rating from memory or relying on self-assessment alone would not correct the problem.

  1. AKeeping a continuous record of critical incidents throughout the appraisal periodCorrect
  2. BUsing a single end-of-year rating scale completed from memory
  3. CReplacing the appraisal with a self-assessment form only

Explanation

The problem is recency bias. Recording specific incidents of effective and ineffective behaviour throughout the period gives evidence from the whole year. A rating scale from memory would worsen the bias, and self-assessment alone replaces the manager's evidence with the employee's own view and does not fix it.

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