BUS303 performance appraisal paper: planning guide
Five discussion points in two to three pages makes this HR paper a compression exercise — and the fifth point, discrimination risks in appraisals under labor law, is the one that separates papers, because it demands legal specifics the other four do not.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 11, 2026
How do five appraisal points fit in three pages?
The word budget is the first constraint to respect: five substantive discussion points — appraisals as an HR-and-management function, the components of an effective appraisal, the contribution to organizational goals, the advantages for training and development, and discrimination risks under labor law — inside two to three double-spaced pages, plus the required introduction and conclusion paragraphs. That is roughly half a page per point. Papers that spend a page defining performance appraisal (which the brief's own opening paragraph already does) run out of room where the analysis is graded. Treat the brief's verbs as depth markers: two points ask you to 'explain', one to 'discuss', one to 'analyze' — and the analyze point (components of an effective appraisal) is where a framework earns its keep: performance planning, clear criteria, feedback quality, employee participation, and the link to consequences.
The discrimination point deserves disproportionate care because it has actual law behind it. Appraisals feed decisions about promotion, pay and termination, which makes them a locus for every federally protected category — race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age forty and over, disability, genetic information — and for two failure modes worth naming: subjective criteria applied inconsistently across protected groups, and neutral-seeming evaluation policies with disparate impact. Retaliation through a suddenly negative review after a complaint is the third pattern regulators watch. Citing the enforcement agency's own statements of prohibited practices turns this section from caution into competence. One agency citation and two named failure modes clear the point; a paragraph of good intentions does not. Anchor each mode to a decision the appraisal feeds — promotion, pay, termination — and the section is complete.
The brief also assigns a reading — the article on adapting appraisals to the modern workplace — and the safest interpretation is that your paper should visibly engage it, since it was placed before the point list on purpose: the modern-workplace critique (annual reviews giving way to continuous feedback) is directly relevant to the components and advantages points. The support links to library research tools signal the expected sourcing register: scholarly and professional HR sources located through the library, evaluated for credibility, not the first HR blog a search returns. If a claim needs a source you found in thirty seconds, the CRAAP test the brief links exists for exactly that moment. Two scholarly sources plus the assigned article is a defensible floor for a paper this size.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Compress five stated discussion points into a 2-3 page structure without sacrificing the analytical point.
- 02Analyze effective appraisal components as a system — planning, criteria, feedback, participation, consequences — rather than a list.
- 03Connect appraisals to training and development concretely: appraisal findings as the input to development plans.
- 04Identify appraisal-specific discrimination risks under federal law: protected categories, inconsistent subjective criteria, disparate impact, retaliation.
- 05Engage the assigned modern-workplace article where it bears on the components and advantages points.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01A two-to-three page paper (excluding title and references pages) in APA style with the specified title page elements.
- 02Coverage of all five stated points in the brief's own verbs: discuss, analyze, explain, explain, explain.
- 03An introduction and conclusion paragraph, both required explicitly.
- 04Engagement with the assigned article on adapting the performance appraisal process, and scholarly sources located per the brief's library guidance.
How should the appraisal paper allocate its space?
Introduction and the HR-management function
Open with the thesis and cover point one: appraisals as a joint HR and management function — HR designs and standardises the process, managers execute and calibrate it.
Components of an effective appraisal
Analyze the system: performance planning and clear criteria set in advance, evidence-based feedback, employee voice, consistency across raters, and linkage to consequences and development.
Organizational goals, training and development
Cover points three and four together where space demands: how cascading objectives make appraisals an alignment tool, and how appraisal findings become the diagnostic input for training plans and development pathways.
Discrimination risks under labor law
Name the protected categories appraisals can implicate and the appraisal-specific patterns: subjective criteria applied unevenly, neutral policies with disparate impact, and retaliation surfacing as sudden negative reviews.
Conclusion
Close by restating the through-line: appraisals serve the organization only when they are well-designed, development-linked and legally defensible — the three threads the body just argued.
Which HR and EEOC sources anchor the paper?
Recommended databases
- University library HR journals (per the brief's tip sheets)
- EEOC
- PMC/SAGE for performance management research
Search sequence
- 1.Read the assigned article on adapting the performance appraisal process first; two of the five points lean on it.
- 2.Pull the EEOC's prohibited practices page for the discrimination point's protected categories and disparate-impact language.
- 3.Find one peer-reviewed performance-management study for the components and effectiveness claims.
- 4.Run web sources through the credibility check the brief's CRAAP guide describes before citing them.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Prohibited Employment Policies/Practices
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission · 2024
The enforcement agency's own statement of protected categories, disparate impact and retaliation — the legal anchor the discrimination point requires.
- 02
Effectiveness of Performance Management System for Employee Performance Through Engagement
SAGE Open · 2020
Peer-reviewed evidence linking performance management design to employee performance via engagement — support for the components and organizational-contribution points.
- 03
Performance management system and its role for employee performance: Evidence from Ethiopian SMEs
Heliyon (via PMC) · 2023
A study connecting performance management practice to measured employee outcomes — useful behind the training-and-development advantages point.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Spending the opening page re-defining performance appraisals when the brief's own preamble already does — the definition is given; the five points are the paper.
- Writing the components point as a list instead of the analysis its verb demands — why each component makes an appraisal effective is the graded content.
- Treating the discrimination point as a caution paragraph ('be fair') when it asks for potential forms of discrimination based on labor laws — protected categories and failure patterns, named.
- Ignoring the assigned article, which was placed before the requirements to be used, and whose modern-workplace argument feeds two of the five points.
- Sourcing from HR blogs when the brief's library-tool links define the expected register — scholarly and professional sources, credibility-checked.
- Skipping the required introduction and conclusion paragraphs, which the brief lists as must-haves alongside the title-page elements.
Submission checklist
- All five points present, each identifiable by its own transition or subheading.
- The components point reads as analysis (why these components work), not enumeration.
- The discrimination point names protected categories and at least two appraisal-specific failure modes.
- The assigned article cited where relevant.
- Introduction and conclusion paragraphs present; title page carries all five required elements.
- 2-3 pages, APA throughout.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.