What is the purpose of a performance appraisal?

A performance appraisal serves the crucial purpose of reviewing an employee's job performance and overall contribution to the organization. This process involves assessing an employee's strengths, areas for improvement, and overall effectiveness in their role. It provides an opportunity for managers to offer constructive feedback, set future goals, and engage employees in discussions about their career development.

By focusing on performance and contributions, appraisals help to align individual employee objectives with organizational goals, ensuring that both employees and the organization benefit from improved performance and productivity. Additionally, performance appraisals can facilitate communication between employees and management, foster a sense of accountability, and help to identify training and development needs, which ultimately supports organizational growth.

The other options do not accurately represent the intent of performance appraisals. Competing against one another does not promote teamwork and collaboration, reducing the workload of managers might be a secondary effect but is not the main goal, and enforcing disciplinary actions does not encompass the supportive and developmental purposes that performance appraisals typically aim to achieve.