Chapter 5 Employee Evaluation
Some of the issues with criteria
Criterion Contamination: The extent to which performance appraisals contain elements that detract from the accurate assessment of job effectiveness. E.g. Bias, e.x. positive rating for having a past history of success. Or. Poor for having poor sales despite being young and inexperienced. Criterion Deficiency: The degree to which a criterion falls short of measuring job performance. You should be assessing all aspects of their job. Otherwise you're not measuring the job performance effectively. Basically content validity.
• What is a performance appraisal and what is its purpose?
Performance Appraisal: Measures worker performance in comparison to certain predetermined standards. Very important for promotions and evaluations. It's a good way to move up the ladder since it's evidence to justify those types of decision. Also, these is a good way to see if you're doing poorly so you can improve. It's constructive feedback. The job analysis allows you to do this correctly. Purpose: Feedback to improve performance Foundation for raises and promotions Information for the attainment of work goals
• Know the different types of criteria
Performance Criteria: Measures used to determine successful and unsuccessful job performance. Objective Basically an objective data with quantity. such as sales. Decide if it's a month or a year and compare with the other employees. tied to the bottom line. The problem is it's like Taylorism and very rigid. A problem since it's limiting. E.x., sales person might have high sales due to being pushy. Subjective: Measure of job performance that typically consist of ratings or judgments of performance Takes into account situational factors and context. example: difficult to assess manager position because its difficult to specify exact behaviors that indicate successful managerial performance. can be used to assess things like motivations that lack objective form. However, the issue with this type of measurement is that is prone to bias and distortion. Criterion Relevance: The extent to which the means of appraising performance is pertinent to job success. Criterion Relevance: is it relevant to the job's success. If its not part of the KSAO's or the job description then it should not be part of the performance criteria. People will do it incorrectly by "thinking" a employee should act in such and such a way. This is an issue for consultants to handle. Criterion Usefulness: Performance criterion is useable in appraising a particular job. If way of measuring is excessively expensive or cumbersome to complete then it might not be worth it.
• What are the different methods of rating employees? Comparative Methods
Comparative Methods: Performance appraisal methods involving comparisons of one worker's performance against that of other workers. Rankings (e.g. best to worst) - What if everyone did well or poorly? what the difference between 1st and 2nd? Paired comparison: Compares each employee to every other employee. Becomes a mess when you have lots of employees. hard to keep track of. Forced distribution: Established categories with fixed limitations about how many employees can be assigned to each category. - basically a normal distribution - curving. this is when it's forced.. easy to compare and contrast them. the drawbacks is the limited nature of the design. Forcing people into limited category is a over simplification that can make people look less valuable than they actually are. The advantage is to fire the lowest levels and promote the top percentages.
• What are the different methods of rating employees? Individual Methods
Individual methods: performance appraisal methods that evaluate an employee by himself or herself, without explicit reference to other workers. Graphic Rating Scales: Performance appraisal methods using a predetermined scale to rate the worker on important job dimensions - should be specific to each job. prone to biases. i.e. always high, always low. Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales: Scales with labels reflecting examples of poor, average, and good behavioral incidents. Behavioral Observation Scale: Performance Appraisal methods that require appraisers to recall how often a worker has been observed performing key work behaviors. Based on memory and so susceptible to biases. Checklists: Performance appraisals methods using a series of statements about job performance. each item given a value to reflect degree of effective performance. Summed to give total score. Forced choice: Appraiser must choose most or least descriptive statement, Narratives: Open ended written accounts of worker's performance used in performance appraisals, often include specific examples of performance strengths and weaknesses. No quantification of performance. Prone to misinterpretation by worker.
• What are the common issues with performance appraisals and how can one solve these issues?
Leniency/Severity Errors - bias as to how they rate. either high or low ratings - never give a middle rating. This can reduce motivation and it back fires. If you get high scores, then you don't improve. lack in variance. Central Tendency Error: Always choosing the center. Halo Effect: You'll basically look at people as better when it comes to the school they come from and everything looks good. its a perception as being better. Recency Effect: They recall the most behaviors. Actor-observer bias: Causal Attribution: they attribute your behavior to the personality. "you messed up because you're lazy". they ignore the context. refers to our attribution of the causes of behavior. Personal Bias: Discrimination based on things like Weight, or Gender. Cross-Cultural and International Issues: Behaviors and communications that are misunderstood in other cultures. Sometimes we are judging behaviors that are culturally bound. I.e. Eye contact. Some cultures don't like eye contact.
• Know the different sources of employee ratings and the pros and cons of each.
Supervisor Appraisals: They often do this. It's effective and they can know you're working. They should know what you should be doing. The problem is that it can be human error. they could hate you. also, you don't want just his/her opinion. They may not see everything you do. Self-Appraisals: self-reports. However, you can rate yourself poorly or great. Tends to contaminated depending on the culture. same with gender issues since people don't rate themselves fairly. Peer Appraisals: these people work with you and know your job as much as they do. However, competition will knock you down. They may not like you personally. Or rate their friends more favorably. Crossing boundaries. It can complicate their relationships. Subordinate: They have a different opinion than you do. It needs to be secretive and must have enough employees to hide them. Customer: you need to make sure that they're happy since they are paying them. they may not be knowledgable. They report mostly negative feedback rather than positive feedback. 360-degree feedback: Everyone is involved and contradictions will cancel each other out.
