Deck 9: Performance Evaluation and Management

Question 1

Objective
The exercise is designed to have the student use knowledge about selection and performance appraisal to design an appraisal system.
Introduction
Row Engineering (name disguised) is a major engineering contractor, supplying aerospace firms, NASA, and the military with sophisticated equipment designs. Because of their rapidly expanding business, Row executives have decided that a formal management information system (MIS) is needed. The MIS may be used to monitor progress on projects, limit employees' access to classified information, reduce unnecessary duplication across similar projects, and generally increase efficiency by ensuring that the proper managers and engineers receive timely and relevant information for decision making.
Row has four major design facilities scattered throughout the southern and eastern United States in areas where approximately 50 percent of all high school graduates are black. Engineers at the different facilities typically work on different projects. Thus, Row executives have decided that one MIS department should be established for each of the four facilities. While these will be linked by computer, each MIS department will have a great deal of autonomy.
Each MIS department will be made up of one administrator, seven administrative assistants, numerous technical personnel (for example, computer programmers), and clerical staff (for example, data entry personnel). The 28 administrative assistant positions will be key entry-level managerial positions. The administrative assistants will be responsible for securing and maintaining information for their assigned MIS area. Also, some may eventually be promoted to middle management positions in the future. Typical duties of an administrative assistant will include
A. Determining appropriate information needs from various projects for the MIS database. To do so requires cooperation with project engineers and managers as well as personnel from other departments.
B. Working with other MIS administrative assistants to develop standardized information reporting procedures. Such procedures facilitate the aggregation and comparison of specific types of information from different projects.
C. Creating and distributing instruction manuals outlining correct procedures for acquiring and reporting information for various departments. Sometimes administrative assistants will provide orientation sessions for company personnel.
D. Ensuring that necessary and timely information is supplied by each project or department, using standardized reporting procedures.
E. Supervising technical and clerical staff who are responsible for data input and retrieval.
F. Supervising technical staff who develop and purchase information software.
G. Maintaining project security by documenting computer analyses, ensuring that only authorized personnel receive relevant information, supervising clerical staff, and preventing unauthorized photocopying of specific types of information.
H. Supplying information, as requested, to project managers, specific departments, and contract monitors.
I. Documenting and supplying information to the fiscal services department regarding monthly time and computer-use expenditures for various projects. Fiscal services uses this information when comparing actual and estimated (budgeted) expenditures for projects and departments. Determining the MIS department's own budget needs.
J. About one year ago, the HR department conducted a formal job analysis of all existing administrative assistant positions throughout the corporation. From this analysis, a common job description was derived. This job description is reproduced on page 281.


Designing the Performance Appraisal System
Currently, all Row Engineering employees, including administrative assistants, are evaluated using a one-item 10-point global rating scale. Ratings of either Unsatisfactory (1) or Superior (10) must be accompanied with written documentation. In addition to the rating supervisor, the department head and the evaluated employee must sign the form, indicating that they have read the evaluation.

Recently, the HR manager has become concerned about the use of this type of rating scale. He has hired your human resource consulting firm to design a better performance appraisal system for the administrative assistant position with all the MIS departments.
Assignment: Write a three- to six-page report of this company describing and explaining your appraisal system. Your report should incorporate the following points;
A. Tactful explanation of the limitations of the present performance appraisal system.
B. Identification of the relevant dimensions (criteria) that should be measured in the new performance appraisal system. That is, how will the company distinguish the superior administrative assistants from those whose performance is merely adequate (or even inadequate)? Assume that the provided job description is correct.
C. How will each dimension be measured?
D. If you use some type of overall measure of performance, tell how you will measure it on a 100-point scale (100 = best). If you have several performance measures, tell how they will be combined into a composite criterion score. This composite score should be measured on a 100-point scale.
E. What weaknesses (if any) exist in your system? How will these be overcome?
A Learning Note
This exercise encourages the student to consider the uses, strengths, and weaknesses of a performance appraisal system.

Answer 1

not answer

Question 2

Assume that you are the vice president of HRM at Eckel Industries and that you are aware that fine-tuning evaluations is a prevalent practice among Eckel managers. If you disagree with this perspective, what steps would you take to reduce the practice?

Answer 2

This case is about four supervisors, working in different sections of manufacturing department. They all are very good friends. In an informal get together, they are discussing about what is the right method of performance appraisal; Whether they should give the accurate rating as per the employee's performance or inflated/deflated rating can also work for the best interest of the department or due to some other reasons.
Some steps can be taken to reduce the practice of fine-tuning evaluation among managers such as:
• Company can adopt the new method of performance appraisal like 360-degree appraisal method or social-sites based applications available for the performance appraisal. Such methods can eliminate the practice of fine-tuning and performance appraisal practice would be more accurate.
• Company can provide training to the managers to help them rating their subordinates more accurately, free from human judgement and any kind of biasness.
• Company can avoid the metrics to measure the performance, which are subjective in nature. Organisation can include more objective metrics in the performance appraisal form.

Question 3

What is "360-degree feedback"? What advantages might it have over more traditional performance appraisal systems that use only downward feedback? What are some of the problems that could occur in using a 360-degree feedback system?

Answer 3

The performance evaluation is an activity of human resource management. In performance evaluation process, the evaluation is conducted with coordination between the operational manager and HR manager. The different evaluation processes are rating done by coworker, subordinates, self-evaluation and 360 degree feedback process.
In 360 degree feedback system, the feedback of an employee is collected from multiple appraisers. The multiple appraisers can be subordinate, coworker and supervisor. In some situation, self-appraisal is also considered. Here, the information of the targeted person is collected and his or her feedback is provided in 360 degree basis that is from top to bottom and from bottom to top.
The advantages of 360 degree feedback over traditional performance appraisal are mentioned as below:
1. In 360 degree feedback, the targeted person's multiple perspective of his or her performance is obtained, where as in traditional performance appraisal, the performance details is obtained from his or her supervisor.
2. As this process is in full circular fashion, the person will be able to learn about his or her strengths and weakness. This will motivate the person to work on his or her strengths and weakness.
3. The performance evaluation can be done based on the targeted person's real contacts and observations.
The disadvantages of 360 degree feedback are mentioned as below:
1. The feedback collected from all multiple appraisers will become overloaded.
2. The 360 degree feedback process is time consuming. It takes lot of time to collect information and to integrate information into a complete assessment document.
3. The conflicting feedback from the appraiser will create frustration and confusions.

Question 4

Why would training in conducting performance evaluations be an important issue for organizations to consider?

Question 5

Review three of the evaluation approaches discussed in this chapter by applying W. Edwards Deming's criticisms. How does each approach fare?

Question 6

How often should formal performance evaluations take place? Informal ones?

Question 7

Who usually evaluates employees in organizations? Who should do so? Under what circumstances? What criteria should be used to evaluate employees? Which ones are used?

Question 8

Explain why performance management is important in accomplishing organizational goals.

Question 9

What are the characteristics of an effective appraisal interview? How should new and experienced employees be treated differently during the interview?

Question 10

What should an organization do in order to help make sure that its performance evaluation system is legal? What is the role of job analysis in this process?

Question 11

What is MBO? What advantages does it have over traditional performance evaluation methods? What are its weaknesses?

Question 12

What are the major reasons for employee complaints about performance appraisal systems?

Question 13

Do you consider the description of the Firestone store manager's responsibilities important information that the raters of managers need to be knowledgeable about?

Question 14

Does the portion of the performance evaluation form used at Bridgestone/Firestone require any subjective judgments or considerations on the part of the rater?

Question 15

Suppose that a Bridgestone/Firestone manager received an outstanding performance evaluation. Does that mean that he or she is promotable? Why?

Question 16

In your opinion, and from an HRM perspective, what are the objectives of employee performance evaluation?

Question 17

On the basis of these objectives, evaluate the perspectives about performance appraisal presented by the managers.