Individual performance: Do we measure it accurately?

Despite increasing efforts to accurately measure individual work performance (IWP), performance measures have payed limited attention to the relative importance (RI) of each performance dimension on respective employees’ performance. In our attempt to test if including RI better captures IWP, we adopted a quantitative study. We collected performance data of 329 Sri Lankan middle level employees from respective supervisors. Using structural equation modelling, we found that both performance items alone and performance dimensions with RI methods are valid and reliable, yet the latter has significantly higher levels of model fit compared to the former. Thus, including RI of each performance dimension better captures IWP than performance dimensions alone. Our paper contributes to theory and provides useful insights to practice.