chapter 7

Making Termination Decisions

providing feedback, counseling, and training to employees does not always increase performance or reduce discipline problems. -When performance management techniques are not successful, the results of a performance review might suggest that the best course of action is to terminate the employee.

rank order

In this approach, employees are ranked in order by their judged performance for each relevant dimension

Goal-Focused Performance Dimensions

basis of goals to be accomplished by the employee

Ratings of Performance

-how well the employee performed on each dimension

Peers

-often see the actual behavior -Peer ratings usually come from employees who work directly with an employee

Public policy/interest.

Employers cannot terminate an employee for exercising a legal duty such as jury duty or refusing to violate the law or professional ethics.

Implied contracts

Employment-at-will is nullified if an employer implies that an employee "has a job for life" or can be fired only for certain reasons.

Contracts.

If an individual employee has a signed employment contract stipulating a particular period of employment, an organization cannot fire the employee without cause.

paired comparisons

This method involves comparing each possible pair of employees and choosing which one of each pair is the better employee

Covenants of good faith and fair dealing

Though employers are generally free to hire and fire at will, the courts have ruled that employers must still act in good faith and deal fairly with an employee.

forced distribution

With this method, a predetermined percentage of employees are placed in each of the five categories

Obtaining and Reviewing Objective Data

-A production supervisor might review the number of days an employee was absent, number of units produced, and the tons of material wasted. These data, when combined with critical incident logs, provide a solid basis on which to rate an employee.

Self-Appraisal

-Allowing an employee to evaluate her own behavior and performance is a technique used by only a small percentage of organizations

Evaluation of Performance Appraisal Methods

-Although techniques such as behavioral checklists are only slightly more psychometrically sound, they still have some advantages over graphic rating scales.

Rating Incidents

-Another group of job experts is given the incidents and asked to rate each one on a scale that can have from five to nine points as to the level of job performance that it represents

Safety

-As with tenure, safety is usually used for research purposes, but it can also be used for employment decisions such as promotions and bonuses.

Attendance

-Attendance can be separated into three distinct criteria: absenteeism, tardiness, and tenure. Both absenteeism and tardiness have obvious implications for the performance appraisal process

Frequency of Desired Behaviors.

-Behaviors can be rated based on the frequency with which they occur

Recent behaviors

-In addition to first impressions, supervisors tend to recall the most recent behavior that occurred during the evaluation period.

Unusual or extreme behaviors

-In addition to first impressions, supervisors tend to recall the most recent behavior that occurred during the evaluation period.

Mixed-Standard Scales

-Mixed-standard scales are developed by having employees rate job behaviors and critical incidents on the extent to which they represent various levels of job performance. For each job dimension, a behavior or incident is chosen that represents excellent performance, average performance, and poor performance.

Behavior consistent with the supervisor's opinion

-Once we form an opinion of someone, we tend to look for behaviors that confirm that opinion. If a supervisor likes an employee, she will probably recall only behaviors consistent with that opinion.

Bias

-Raters who like the employees being rated may be more lenient.

First impressions

-Research from many areas of psychology indicates that we remember our first impression of someone (primacy effect) more than we remember later behaviors.

Recency Effect

-Research has demonstrated, however, that recent behaviors are given more weight in the performance evaluation than behaviors that occurred during the first few months of the evaluation period. Such an effect penalizes workers who performed well during most of the period but tailed off toward the end, and it rewards workers who saved their best work until just before the evaluation.

Subordinates

-Subordinate feedback (also called upward feedback) is an important component of 360-degree feedback, as subordinates can provide a very different view about a supervisor's behavior.

Emotional State

-The amount of stress under which a supervisor operates also affects her performance ratings

Train Raters

-The effectiveness of rater training also is a function of training format

Creating the Scale

-The incidents chosen in the previous step are then placed on a vertical scale

Contrast Errors

-The performance rating one person receives can be influenced by the performance of a previously evaluated person

Completing the Rating Form

-The supervisor is ready to assign performance appraisal ratings. While making these ratings, the supervisor must be careful not to make common rating errors involving distribution, halo, proximity, and contrast.

Forced-Choice Rating Scales

-These scales use critical incidents and relevant job behaviors, as do BARS, but the scale points are hidden.

Using BARS

-To use the scale when actually rating performance, the supervisor compares the incidents she has recorded for each employee with the incidents on each scale.

Determining Salary Increases

-a job's worth is determined by many factors, including the degree of responsibility and level of education required to perform the job. -one important reason for evaluating employee performance is to provide a fair basis on which to determine an employee's salary increase. If performance appraisal results are to be used to determine salary increases, a numerical rather than narrative format is probably needed.

Halo Errors

-a rater allows either a single attribute or an overall impression of an individual to affect the ratings that she makes on each relevant job dimension.

Extent to Which Organizational Expectations Are Met

-best approach is to rate employees on the extent to which their behavior meets the expectations of the organization

Objective Measures

-called objective, or hard, criteria. Common types of objective measures include quantity of work, quality of work, attendance, and safety

Reduction in Force (Layoff )

-can be terminated if it is in the best economic interests of an organization to do so.

Focus of the Appraisal Dimensions

-can focus on traits, competencies, task types, or goals.

Leniency error

-certain raters tend to rate every employee at the upper end of the scale regardless of the actual performance of the employee

Comparison with Other Employees

-comparing the employee's level of performance with that of other employees. It is important to note that when such scale anchors as "below average," " average," and "above average" are used

Competency-Focused Performance Dimensions

-concentrate on the employee's knowledge,skills, and abilities. For example, competency-focused dimensions might include writing skills, oral presentation skills, and driving skills

Trait-Focused Performance Dimensions

-concentrates on such employee attributes as dependability, honesty, and courtesy.

Prior to the Meeting

-ensure that the legal process has been followed -determine how much help, if any, the organization wants to offer the employee. Forms of help can include references, severance pay, and outplacement assistance. -schedule an appropriate place and time for the meeting to occur. The meeting should be held in a neutral, private location. To avoid potential damage caused by a hostile reaction to the termination decision, the meeting should not be held in a supervisor's office.

Making Promotion Decisions

-evaluating performance is to determine which employees will be promoted. Although it would seem only fair to promote the best employee, this often does not occur

Choosing Incidents

-find one incident to represent each of the points on the scale for each dimension

Observation of Behavior

-just because an employee's behavior is observed does not guarantee that it will be properly remembered or recalled during the performance appraisal review. In fact, research indicates that raters recall those behaviors that are consistent with their general impression of an employee

Behavioral Checklist

-list of behaviors, expectations, or results for each dimension.

Behavioral Observation Scales

-more sophisticated method for measuring the frequency of desired behaviors -Because supervisors conduct evaluations only once every 6 months, BOS have been criticized for actually measuring only the recall of behaviors rather than measuring the actual observation of behaviors.

Supervisors

-most common type of performance appraisal is the supervisor rating. In fact -Though supervisors may not see every minute of an employee's behavior, they do see the end result.

After the Meeting

-natural reaction of the supervisor is to feel guilty. To relieve some of this guilt, a supervisor should review the facts—she gave the employee every chance to improve, but the employee chose not to

Sorting Incidents

-o make sure that the incidents written for each job dimension are actually examples of behavior for that dimension, three job experts independently sort the incidents into each of the job dimensions

Infrequent Observation

-occurs for two reasons. First, managers are often so busy with their own work that they have no time to "walk the floor" and observe their employees' behavior. Instead, they make inferences based on completed work or employee personality traits

Conducting Personnel Research

-one way this can be done is by correlating test scores with some measure of job performance.

Customers

-organizations do value customer feedback. Informally, customers provide feedback on employee performance by filing complaints or complimenting a manager about one of her employees.

Task-Focused Performance Dimensions

-organized by the similarity of tasks that are performed.

Probationary Period

-probationary period in which to prove that they can perform well

Quality of Work

-quality of the work that is done -quality is usually measured in terms of errors, which are defined as deviations from a standard.

Strictness error

-rates every employee at the low end of the scale

Graphic Rating Scale

-rating scales poor to excellent

Reading Critical-Incident Logs

-supervisor should go back and read all of the critical incidents written for an employee. Reading these incidents should reduce errors of primacy, recency, and attention to unusual information.

Contextual Performance

-the effort an employee makes to get along with peers, improve the organization, and perform tasks that are needed but are not necessarily an official part of the employee's job description.

Generation of Job Dimensions

-the number and nature of job-related dimensions are determined. If a job analysis has already been conducted, the dimensions can be obtained from the job analysis report

During the Meeting

-the supervisor should get to the point about terminating the employee.

Legal Reasons for Terminating Employees

-there are only four reasons that an employee can be legally terminated: probationary period, violation of company rules, inability to perform, and an economically caused reduction in force (layoffs)

Low Reliability across Raters

-two people rating the same employee seldom agree with each other -Thus, if one rater engages in halo error and another in contrast error, it is not surprising that their ratings of the same employee are different. -two different raters may actually see very different behaviors by the same employee

Distribution Errors

-very common type,distribution errors are made when a rater uses only one part of a rating scale.

Central tendency error

-which results in a supervisor rating every employee in the middle of the scale.

Provisions of federal or state law.

Employees cannot be fired for reasons protected by federal or state law.

Inability to Perform

To do so, though, an organization will need to prove that the employee could not perform the job and that progressive discipline was taken to give the employee an opportunity to improve

public sector

an employee can be fired only for cause. -The idea behind employment at will is that because employees are free to quit their jobs at will, so too are organizations free to terminate an employee at will

Critical incidents

are examples of excellent and poor employee performance. Such documentation is usually written in a critical incident log—formal accounts of excellent and poor employee performance that were observed by the supervisor. -how to provide feedback will occur later in this chapter as well -Documentation forces a supervisor to focus on employee behaviors rather than traits and provides behavioral examples to use when reviewing performance ratings with employees. -documentation helps supervisors recall behaviors when they are evaluating performance -documentation provides examples to use when reviewing performance ratings with employees

State law.

have laws that an employee can be fired only for cause—e.g., breaking a rule, demonstrating an inability to perform.

frame-of-reference training

make fewer rating errors and recall more training information than do untrained raters or raters receiving information about only job-related behaviors

Quantity of Work

obtained by simply counting the number of relevant job behaviors that take place.

private sector

the employment-at-will doctrine in most states allows employers freedom to fire an employee without a reason—at will.

Providing Employee Training and Feedback

the most important use of performance evaluation is to improve employee performance by providing feedback about what employees are doing right and wrong.

Peter Principle

the promotion of employees until they reach their highest level of incompetence.

Proximity Errors

when a rating made on one dimension affects the rating made on the dimension that immediately follows it on the rating scale