Boulder County Public Health (BCPH) is a public agency with five divisions with more than 200 employees responsible for providing numerous programs to the community that protect and prevent individuals from harmful diseases (Boulder County, 2011). Their mission is: “Boulder County Public Health shall protect, promote, and improve the health and well-being of all people and the environment in Boulder County (Boulder County, 2011, ¶ 1 ). » With the aim of standardizing the employee evaluation system across the five divisions, the organization developed a standard performance management system in 2005. According to Aguinis, fourteen characteristics form an ideal performance management system and the system of Boulder County Public Health's performance management will be evaluated to see which of these characteristics their system possesses. 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 a single system. However, according to Aguinis (2009), systems that have more of these characteristics are generally more effective. After reviewing the BCPH system, they exhibit only three of the characteristics and only some aspects of two other characteristics described by Aguinis (2009). The characteristics of their PM system are strategic congruence, rigor and inclusiveness. In addition, their system has certain practical, meaningful and reliable aspects. However, several of the fourteen characteristics are missing and two of them are acceptability/fairness and standardization. Management systems and those that exhibit a greater number of the fourteen characteristics are more likely to be successful in advancing the organization's goals (Aguinis, 2009). According to Winkler (2007), organizations need to improve their employee evaluation system and move towards performance management systems because 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 are performing the right tasks and that the organization has effective support to help individuals. Boulder County Public Health has started to move away from just evaluating employees, which is a step in the right direction. However, much remains to be done to ensure that their system is effective and perceived as fair and equitable by all staff...