AGENT-BASED PERFORMANCE EVALUATION SYSTEM
ABSTRACT
The problem of performance evaluation is a hydra-headed monster that affects business growth because of non-existence of evaluation process in many organizations. In organizations with an evaluation process in place, performance evaluation is not properly automated; they are usually inconclusive and incomplete due to biased, partial and inadequate handling of performance metrics. In order to achieve the goal of objectivity, credibility and trust in staff appraisal, a system that achieves unbiased, comprehensive and self-information gathering should be provided. This study, therefore, focused on developing an Agent-Based Performance Evaluation System towards addressing these deficiencies.
In developing the proposed system, the spiral model of the Software Development Life Cycle was adopted. The metrics that were used by the system to evaluate performance included attendance, staff’s responsiveness, punctuality and projects. The programming environment used for the development include Netbeans IDE, Hypertext Mark-up Language, MySQL, MySQL DB connector, Apache and PHPmyAdmin. The system/application was evaluated in a social context at T&K printing solutions, Lagos. The company via the Human Resource Manager utilized, tested and evaluated the system on four (4) employees. The evaluation was based on the system’s efficiency and user friendliness/usability.
A model of agent-based performance evaluation system for managing staff-work information and auto-Scoring based on organization’s predefined uniform company-wide appraisal score-weights was developed. An agent-based performance evaluation application was created as an instantiation of the model. The evaluation of the system revealed the manager’s appreciation for the system because employees were glad to have their strengths and weaknesses revealed to them as regards execution of particular projects.
In conclusion, the research found that a proper appraisal of employees can serve as a motivating factor encouraging commitment towards the growth of any organization. It is, therefore, recommended that prompt and unbiased performance appraisal system be deployed by organizations.
Keywords: Performance Evaluation, Agent, Appraisal, Performance Metrics, Auto-Scoring.