Which error involves groups of ratings given to employees?

The correct choice focuses on distributional errors, which occur when a manager's ratings for a group of employees reflect a skewed distribution rather than an accurate assessment of their performance. This can manifest in various ways, such as rating most employees within a narrow band or being overly generous or harsh in evaluations of particular groups. Such errors can compromise the integrity of performance evaluations, which are essential for effective human resource management, affecting promotions, bonuses, and overall employee morale.

Distributional errors highlight the importance of ensuring that ratings are reflective of actual performance levels rather than being influenced by general patterns or tendencies unique to certain groups. Recognizing these errors is critical for HR professionals to implement accurate performance management systems that genuinely assess individual contributions.

The other options represent different types of errors that don't specifically pertain to the groups of ratings. For instance, temporal errors relate to the timing of the appraisal and how it may affect assessments, while the error of central tendency signifies an inclination to rate employees near the middle of the scale, regardless of their actual performance. Individual bias errors focus on personal biases that affect an individual's rating, rather than errors associated with groups of ratings. Understanding distributional errors allows HR professionals to refine evaluation processes, mitigating biases that can arise when appraising multiple employees