Recent studies highlight the importance of employee performance appraisal in the context of strategic human resources management, outlining the role of organizational context. Accordingly, the paper presents an employee performance appraisal conceptual framework including the role of contextual factors, where strategic human resources management plays a key role. Moreover, the model includes two sets of procedural and representative basic performance criteria, as well as a new category of profile performance criteria as the foundation for developing flexible, customized and meaningful employee performance appraisal systems and processes aimed at improving individual and organizational overall performance.