Accurate Assessment

• Assuming a fair and impartial manager, the top-down appraisal provides the best assessment of an employee's work relative to his job, departmental and organizational goals, according to Inc. Managers often help employees set the goals on which they are evaluated and train them on how to effectively do their jobs. In situations in which the employee and manager interact consistently, the manager should have closeness to the employee to know his strengths and weaknesses.
  
  

Rewards and Goals

• Though effective top-down evaluations should not include dramatic surprises, they do offer managers an ability to give rewards and help set higher goals. Many employees see evaluations as a time to get raises or bonuses. This is not the intent, but motivating employees to continued strong performance is an objective. Managers and employees can review goals and decide what areas the employee should focus on to continue to develop.
  
  

Bias and Error

• The effectiveness of top-down evaluations relies on managers with an appropriate understanding of the communication and motivation intentions of evaluations. Some managers do bring personal feelings toward employees into evaluations and can either overly criticize or overly praise work. In either case, this gives the employee an inaccurate picture of his performance and does not offer useful information for growth and development. Scoring an employee too low can demotivate him. Scoring him too high can give him a false sense of his abilities and performance.
  
  

Limited Perspectives

• A primary disadvantage of top-down reviews is their singular perspective. This has contributed to increased prevalence of 360-degree feedback and other evaluation tools that incorporate more than one opinion. Even an affective manager assessment is limited since the employee performs in front of colleagues, customers, business partners and subordinates that have different expectations and experiences. A manager may like what an employee does in the office but he may offend half of the clients he meets with.