Section Fournarratives into increases in compensation. Nonetheless, they
are very useful in developmental counseling.
Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales
The most advanced of the approaches to performance
evaluation are behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS). With
BARS approaches, job incumbents are evaluated according to
their performance on a relatively small set of job dimensions. A
major advantage of the approach is that for each dimension,
specific anchor points on the rating scale are provided in the
form of observable behaviors. Thus, the evaluator is not forced
to choose between the ambiguous meanings of adjective or
numerical scale values. For example, in rating an employee’s
performance as a consumer credit representative in handling
denials of credit, the rater does not have to decide whether the
employee merits a rating of 6 or 7 on a 10-point scale. With the
BARS approach, the evaluator typically chooses among an array
of observable behaviors for the one that is most representative.
In the case of the credit representative, such behaviors might
range from “tactfully informs the customer that credit cannot
be extended at this time and encourages the customer to
reapply at a later date” to “tells customer that he or she is a
bad credit risk and that it would be pointless to reapply.”
Because the evaluator is reporting observations, rather than
making inferences about the mental processes of an employee,