Leniency error

Leniency error
See also
Central tendency error Breaking the glass ceiling Effects of employee departure Competitive disadvantage Forced distribution method Negative reinforcement Corporate policy Organizational commitment Direct labor efficiency variance

Leniency error is kind of distortion mostly occurs in employee ratings when person who is responsible for rating are unusually understanding towards evaluated person even if employee does not deserved that. Other definition of leniency error emphasize that this problem occurs when raters value all employees regardless of their productivity at work, in this case above the employee evaluation scale.

The opposite of the leniency error is strictness or severity error, sometimes also called as negative leniency error. It is distinguished by the employee's rating below their actual performance.

Reasons of occurrence

There are a lot of reasons why leniency error occurs. The most common reasons is caused by perception errors of the evaluator and assessment methods or by company policy. Some examples of reasons of occurrence are mentioned below:

• Recognizing only positive aspects or intentional avoiding negative aspects of the employee.
• Supervisor believe that low ratings may jeopardized the relationship with subordinates.
• Low employee rating also means low effectiveness of the manager.
• The manager does not give high ratings to avoid to be noticed that he favor someone special.
• The employee's evaluation is done face-to-face.

Ways to avoid leniency error

Leniency error caused by the above-mentioned reasons can be easily neutralize by:

• Using well constructed rating scales.
• Employee evaluation by several people.
• Organize for assessors Rater Error Training and Rater Acurracy Training.
• Reducing leniency error with training for supervisor called calibration meeting.
• Adopting tested methods of employee evaluation preventing wrong rating.
• Normalizing results from ratings to establish norms of comparability between different raters or employees.

Other ratings errors

For the most common ratings error belongs:

• Strictness error
• Central Tendency
• Halo Effect
• Recency of events error
• Similarity error

Disadvantages of ratings errors

Leniency error and other ratings errors have influence on company efficiency. It usually reduces efficiency by:

• Company cannot identify strengths and weaknesses of employees.
• Demotivating effect, for example when two employees doing same work with a different efficiency and they receive the same rating.
• Worse relationship between the manager and his subordinates.
• Excess or lack of the bonuses for effective work.
• Increase in renumeration costs for the company.
• Unfair treatment of employees due to their evaluation of work.

References

• Aamodt M. G. , (2015), Industrial/Organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach, Cengage Learning, Boston.
• C. Birkenbach, X. (1984) Halo, Central Tendency, and Leniency in performance appraisel: A comparison between a graphic rating scale and a behaviourally based measure, "Perspectives on Industrial Psychology", South African Journal of Industrial Psychology.
• DeCenzo D., Robbins S. P., Verhulst S. L., (2016),Fundamentals of Human Resource Management, Binder Ready Version, John Wiley & Sons.
• Jones J. W., Steffy B. D., Bray D. W., (1991), Applying Psychology in Business: The Handbook for Managers and Human Resource Professionals, Lexington Books, Douglas Weston.
• Kumar D. Bhattacharyya, (2011), Performance Management Systems and Strategies, Pearson Education India, New Delhi.
• Landy F. J., Conte J. M., (2010), Work in the 21st Century: An Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology, John Wiley & Sons, Malden.
• Lunenburg F. C., (2012), Performance Appraisal: Methods and Rating Errors, "International Journal of Scholarly Academic Intellectual Diversity", Volume 14 Number 1, Sam Houston State University.

Author: Fryderyk Olchawa