Rating Scale | Meaning and Definition

What is rating scale?

The rating scale is defined as the quantifiable measurement that is most commonly seen to be used in the process of performance management. It is needed in order to rate the performance of the employees. This is helpful in marking a certain employee’s level of achievement as well as skills and other necessities. It is needed to make sure that the employee is skilled enough to get their assigned job done.

There are many benefits of the rating scales. One of the biggest benefits is that it opens the way for simple and short comparisons between employees. This is actually beneficial for the employees as it helps in speeding up the process of appraisal. It actually benefits the employees in the very end. Therefore these scales has proved to be extremely beneficial for all sorts of employees working in the Department of Human Resources in the long run. One should know that the it is very important for the employees as it helps in raising their appraisal. Appraisals and their increase are of utmost importance to all the employees as it helps in making how efficient the employees are in their respective work fields.

There are various types of rating scales that can be found in the department of Human Resources. There are five level performance management scales that are most commonly found and used. Although despite the presence of the five level performance management scales the employers are free to choose other forms of alternatives as well.

What are the types of rating scale?

Generally, there are four types of rating scale used in any organization:

1. Graphic scale

This scale indicates ratings from 1-3, 1-5 ,etc. This scale is often used by the HR professionals to conduct employee evaluation and feedback in the organization. The data is represented using a graphical scale. Employees can response in form of level of satisfaction such as highly satisfied, dissatisfied, neutral etc.

2. Numerical rating scale

This scale has number options and each corresponds to a specific feature/characteristic.

For example- Rating of 1 means highly satisfies, rating of 2 means satisfied, rating of 3 means neutral, rating o 4 means dissatisfied and rating of 5 depicts extremely dissatisfied.

3. Descriptive rating scale

Using this scale proper response is provided to the respondents and this response varies from situation to situation.

For example- There are various employee surveys that require descriptive rating .

4. Comparative scale

As the name itself suggests, this scale is used to make comparisons. Comparison can be either based on the measurement or keeping the organizations/ products/ characteristics as refrence.

Advantages of Rating scale

Rating scale offers number of benefits to organizations. Some of the benefits are:

It is easy to understand and actually implement the rating scales in organizations.
It makes the comparative analysis easy with comparative data within the target sample.
It helps to present the data in short form which saves the time of an individual.
Abundant data and information can be analyzed within short time using these scales.
It helps to quickly analyze the data with the help of these scales.
It helps to establish a certain standard for measurement.

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