In absolute systems, raters provide evaluations of an employee’s performance without making direct reference to other employees. In the simplest absolute system, a rater writes an essay describing each employee’s strengths and weaknesses and makes suggestions for improvement. One advantage of the essay system is that raters have the potential to provide detailed feedback to employees regarding their performance. But essays are almost totally unstructured, and some raters may choose to be more detailed than others.

Moreover, some raters may be better at writing essays than others. Given this variability, comparisons across individuals, groups, or units are virtually impossible because essays written by different raters. Finally, essays do not provide any quantitative information, making it difficult to use them in some personnel decisions (e.g., allocation of rewards).

A second type of absolute system involves a behavior checklist, which consists of a form listing behavioral statements that are indicators of the various competencies to be measured. The rater’s task is to indicate (“check”) statements that describe the employee being rated. When this type of measurement system is in place, raters are not so much evaluators as they are “reporters” of employee behavior.

Because it is likely that all behaviors rated are present to some extent, behavior checklists usually include a description of the behavior, followed by several response categories, such as “always,” “very often,” “fairly often,” “occasionally,” and “never.” The rater simply checks the response category she feels best describes the employee.