Perception of Justice in Performance Appraisal: Empirical Findings from Enterprises from the West Pomeranian Voivodship in Poland

Employees' perception of justice in performance appraisal systems is an important element of human resources management. Perception of justice directly affects employee motivation and performance, thus the operation of companies and their competitive position. It is necessary that employee appraisal be seen by the staff as fair, because employees today are particularly sensitive to matters of justice in the context of assessment of their work and in their treatment by superiors, while the achievement of organizational goals largely depends on their motivation and performance. This study uses results of a survey conducted on a group of 601 employees from companies in the West Pomeranian Voivodship in Poland. The main purpose of this study is to assess employees' perceptions of fairness towards the performance appraisal in companies of the said province. The findings of the study indicate that close to a half of employees perceive appraisal as unfair and the perception of justice is worst in medium-sized enterprises and among regular workers and mid-level managers. At the same time, a liberal percentage of employees point out that the assessment criteria established are unfair and biased with discriminatory prejudices. The survey has also shown that appraisals are not useful as they do not significantly affect the personnel policy conducted in companies. The results obtained are negative and mean that the approach to appraisal systems in companies must change. The research on perception of justice and usefulness of performance appraisals also points to practical consequences for companies. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://crativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of KES International.