Boulder County Public Health (BCPH) is a public organization that has five divisions with over 200 employees responsible for providing numerous programs to the community, which protect and prevent individuals from harmful diseases (Boulder County, 2011). Their mission is: “Boulder County Public Health protects, promotes, and improves the health and well-being of all people and the environment in Boulder County (Boulder County, 2011, ¶ 1).” In an effort to standardize the employee evaluation system across all five divisions, the organization developed a standard performance management system in 2005. According to Aguinis, there are fourteen characteristics that form an ideal performance management system and Boulder County Public Health's performance management system will be evaluated to see which of these characteristics their system has. Characteristics of an Ideal Performance Management (PM) System Although there are fourteen characteristics of an ideal PM system, not all of them are likely to be present in any system. However, according to Aguinis (2009), systems that exhibit more of these characteristics are usually more successful. After examining the BCPH system, they have only three of the characteristics and only some of the aspects of the other two characteristics described by Aguinis (2009). The characteristics of their PM system are strategic congruence, comprehensiveness and inclusiveness. Furthermore, their system has some portions of convenience, significance and reliability. However, many of the fourteen characteristics are missing and two of these are acceptability/fairness and standardization. Boulder County Public Health PM System From Boulder County Public Health PM System...... middle of paper...... Management systems and those that have more of the fourteen characteristics are more likely to be successful in promoting the organization's goals (Aguinis, 2009). According to Winkler (2007), organizations need to improve their employee evaluation system and are moving towards PM systems since a performance management system is not about controlling individuals; rather, it focuses on improving overall performance (Bowes, 2009). According to Bowes (2009), this ensures that employees perform the right tasks and that the organization has effective support to assist individuals. Boulder County Public Health has begun moving away from simply conducting employee evaluations, which is a step in the right direction. However, there is still a lot of work to do to make their system effective and perceived as fair and equitable by all staff.