What is a downside of using critical incident reports in performance appraisals?

Using critical incident reports in performance appraisals, while beneficial for highlighting specific examples of employee behavior and performance, can present limitations regarding relative performance ratings. The essence of a critical incident report is to document significant actions or behaviors—both positive and negative—that exemplify an employee's performance over a period. However, these reports often focus on individual incidents rather than providing a comprehensive performance assessment relative to others in the organization.

This focus can hinder the ability to produce comparative ratings that help in determining pay raises or promotions. Unlike systems that provide clear benchmarks or scaling for performance across a group, critical incidents are inherently qualitative and do not lend themselves easily to a numerical rating scale that can be used uniformly to evaluate all employees. Thus, while they are valuable for developmental feedback and recognizing specific achievements, they do not serve well in making relative assessments among a broader cohort for compensation decisions.

In contrast, other options may touch upon subjective perceptions of critical incidents or resource intensiveness, but the fundamental issue lies in the nature of the data these reports produce, which is qualitative rather than comparative.