Performance Appraisal System and Its Effect on Employee Productivity in Ethiopian Administrative Offices – The Case of Gera Woreda

Performance Appraisal System is one of the central elements of the human resource management in recent days. Performance appraisal is a major subject of controversy in management circles. The rapidly changing competitive landscape has posed challenges to the organizations and its employees to nurture their talents to face the challenges. Appraisal practices are quite varied from company to company. They vary from almost no appraisal to sophisticated multipurpose, multi components based appraisal systems. In some of the small and medium sized organizations it is common to find no formal mechanisms of appraising performance. Informal appraisal reports are given by senior officers to the top management at the time of promotion decisions. The top management takes the views of appraiser’s into consideration while promoting employees. Some organizations that have performance appraisals that simultaneously with different objectives such as data generation for personnel decisions, such as rewards promotions, job-rotation, transfers and creation of new organizational culture of openness, trust, mutuality and generation of enabling capabilities and employee development that use different components (key performing areas, objective setting, managerial and behavioral dimensions, self-assessment, performance analysis, counseling, identification of training needs etc). The current research paper focuses on to explore the impact of performance system on employee productivity. Key Words: Performance Appraisal System, Self-Assessment, Key Performance Indicators, Key Performance areas, Appraisal Practices.