List the potential liabilities of rating scales. How can these be minimized?

Answer 1

Rating scales are subject to several potential liabilities. Supervisors can easily rate everyone very high (leniency error) or average (central tendency error) on most items. Many rating scales also have the disadvantage of not being related to a specific job. The attributes of the scale are so broad that they may apply to all jobs in the organization and are not developed to apply to any particular job. Rating scales also allow supervisory bias and the halo effect (rating a person high on all attributes based on only one strength) to enter the appraisal process.

To minimize these problems, supervisors should be required to give specific examples of the employee's behavior for each rating and also be required to discuss the appraisal with the employee who is then given space on the form to give reasons why he or she disagrees with a rating. In addition, whenever possible, separate rating scales for each job should be developed to ensure that the attributes evaluated are job-specific.