Chapter 6

Who Conducts Appraisals?

Supervisors who rate their subordinates Employees who rate their supervisors Team members who rate each other Employees' self-appraisals Outside sources rating employees Multisource (360° feedback) appraisal

Appraisal Feedback

Appraisal interview Feedback as a system Data Evaluation Action

Training of Managers and Employees

Appraisal process and timing Performance criteria and job standards that should be considered How to communicate positive and negative feedback When and how to discuss training and development goals Conducting and discussing the compensation review How to avoid common rating errors

Team/Peer Rating-disadvantages

Can negatively affect working relationships. Can create difficulties for managers in determining individual performance. Organizational use of individual performance appraisals can hinder the development of teamwork

Narrative Methods

Critical Incident-Critical incident method: manager keeps a written record of highly favorable and unfavorable employee actions. Essay Methods-manager writes a short essay describing each employee's performance during rating period

Drawbacks of Narrative Methods

Critical incident & Essay Method-Variations in how managers define a "critical incident";Time involved in documenting employee actions: Drawbacks Most employee actions are not observed and may become different if observed; Employee concerns about manager's "black books"; Depends on managers' writing skills and their ability to express themselves

Informal Appraisal

Day-to-day contacts, largely undocumented

Administrative Use of Appraisal

Determining pay adjustments Making job placement decisions on promotions, transfers, and demotions Choosing employee disciplinary actions up to and including termination of employment

Appraisal Feedback continued

Effective Performance Management: Consistent with the strategic mission of the organization Beneficial as development tool Useful as an administrative tool Legal and job-related Viewed as generally fair by employees Effective in documenting employee performance

Systematic Appraisal

Formal contact at regular time intervals, usually documented

Methods for Appraising Performance

Graphic rating scales Focus should be on the job duties and responsibilities identified in job descriptions Behavioral rating scales Describe specific examples of employee job behaviors

Team/Peer Rating-advantages

Helps improve the performance of lower-rated individuals Peers have opportunity to observe other peers. Peer appraisals focus on individual contributions to teamwork and team performance.

Employee Rating of Managers- advantages

Helps in identifying competent managers Serves to make managers more responsive to employees Can contribute to the career development of managers

Legal Concerns and Performance Appraisals

Job-relatedness of performance appraisals Nondiscriminatory process Documentation

Goals of Effective Performance Appraisals

Legal compliance and documentation Administrative uses Developmental uses

Timing of Appraisal

Once or twice a year, most often annually 60-90 days after hiring, again at six months, and annually thereafter

Management by Objectives (MBO)

Management by Objectives Specifying performance goals individuals and their managers agree employees will to try to attain within an appropriate length of time Combination of Methods Sensible in some circumstances

Employee Rating of Managers - disadvantages

Negative reactions by managers to employee ratings Subordinates' fear of reprisals may inhibit them from giving realistic (negative) ratings Ratings are useful only for self-improvement purposes

Terms for Defining Standards

Outstanding(1) Exceeds Expectations(2) Meets Expectations(3) Below expectations(4) Unsatisfactory(5)

Performance Management

Processes used to identify, encourage, measure, evaluate, improve, and reward employee performance and through which managers ensure that employees activities and outputs contribute to the organizations goals

Drawbacks of Comparative methods

Ranking-Drawback: does not show size of differences in performance between employees. Forced Distribution-Drawbacks: Resistance by managers to placing individuals in the lowest or highest groups. Providing explanation for placement in a higher or lower grouping can be difficult.

Comparative Methods

Ranking-all employees from highest to lowest in performance. Forced Distribution- Performance appraisal method in which ratings of employees are distributed along a bell-shaped curve

Types of Performance Information

Trait-based information Identifies a character trait of the employee—such as attitude, initiative, or creativity—and may or may not be job related Behavior-based information Focuses on specific behaviors that lead to job success Results-based information Considers employee accomplishments Performance Measures Objective measures can be observed directly. Subjective measures require judgment on the part of the evaluator.

Performance information

What an employee does and does not do: reference to the Quantity & Quality of output, Timeliness of output and Presence at work

Performance Appraisal

method of measuring employees' adherence to performance standards and providing feedback in relation to said adherence

Administrative developmental use

primary source of information & feedback---key to future development of company -- used to identify strengths, weaknesses, potentials, and training needs