11.PerformanceAppraisal.pptxPerformance Appraisal
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From Position Management to Performance Management….
Position Management:
emphasizing analyzing jobs,
establishing essential duties and responsibilities,
determining necessary knowledge, skills and abilities,
classifying jobs, setting a pay scale,
and using the position as a critical feature of financial management
It could all be done without a single reference to a real live person.
Any deliberate act intended to affect employee performance falls’ under the category of Performance Management.
Formal performance appraisal provides employees with feedback on their work.
Because this leads to organizational decisions regarding promotion and pay the process becomes more complicated:
As it is accompanied by heightened legal scrutiny for civil rights violations and demands for reasons behind the decisions.
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Why Evaluate a Performance?
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Performance appraisal is directed toward technical and management goals but rarely toward employee aspirations.
The technical part focuses on developing an instrument that accurately measures individual performance in order to identify an individual’s strengths and weakness and to differentiate one employee from another.
With this process management hopes to accomplish the following:
Communicate management goals and objectives to employees.
Motivate employees to improve (through feedback and constructive criticism) their performance.
Distribute organizational rewards such as salary increases and promotions equitably.
Conduct personnel management research.
Performance Appraisal and Alternate Personnel Systems..
Performance appraisal and civil service systems go hand in hand to the extent they can help distinguish and document employee performance by advancing the goals of personnel systems based on merit.
Merit-pay plans are those that attempt to tie compensation to performance.
Other Alternative Personnel Systems include:
Affirmative Action Personnel Systems
Collective Bargaining Personnel System
The use of a formal performance appraisal system has a limited use for the following personnel:
Contractors
Part-time or temporary workers;
Can be used for those folks that are looking for full-time permanent job.
Volunteer labor.
Can be used strengthen the psychological contract between volunteers and a public agency or a nongovernmental organization (NGO).
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Contemporary Challenges to Performance Appraisal
Because it’s difficult to imagine behavior changing without feedback.
Therefore , it makes sense that formalizing feedback from supervisor to employee would lead employees to behave in ways their employer valued.
While most formal appraisal systems are administrative (hierarchical) procedures several contemporary work trends challenge the utility of the traditional approach:
The changing nature of work:
Less commitment to the organization and more to the contract
More part-time and or temporary work
Privatization / outsourcing
Flatter organizational hierarchies
Shift from physical work (that can be observed) to knowledge workers
Limited organizational rewards and punishments
These factors combine to diminish the value of performance evaluation in all but traditional civil service systems.
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Performance-Based and Person-Based Evaluation Criteria…
It begins with a Question: “What factors should be evaluated?”
Performance-Based or Person-Based or a mixture of these two?
In the person-based rating system the rater compares employees against other employees or against some absolute standard.
Are the easiest and cheapest to design, administer, and interpret.
Unfortunately they have low validity and low reliability and fail in improving performance…
Performance-based rating systems measure each employee’s behaviors against previously established behaviors and standards.
They communicate managerial objectives clearly;
both are relevant to job performance and reasonably reliable;
and better fulfill the purpose of reward allocation, performance improvement, and personnel management research.
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Why are Performance-Based systems harder to Develop?
First, because performance standards will vary, separate performance standards must be developed for each employee, or for each class of similar position.
Second, the organization may wish to specify desired methods of task performance as well as objectives…
Third, because of the changing nature of organizations and environments the employee performance standard may also change…
Fourth, Job-related objectives measurements are more suited to simple jobs (as apposed to complex high tech jobs) with tangible outputs than can be attributed to employee performance.
Five, its difficult to compare the performance of employees with different standards.
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Appraisal Methods…
The following seven methods are commonly utilized in appraisal methods…
Graphic rating (or adjective scaling)
Ranking
Forced-choice
Essay
Objective
Critical incident (or work sampling)
Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS)
Some of these techniques, primarily the first three, are more adaptable to person-oriented systems. Others are utilized primarily to performance-based systems.
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Graphic rating (or adjective scaling)
A graphic rating scale, defined as any rating scale consisting of points on a continuum, is a generic label given to a broad category of rating formats.
Individuals are presented with a description of a dimension on which to rate the subjects that are to be evaluated, and a continuum with anchor points that demarcate levels of effectiveness along that continuum.
The to evaluate the rater is asked to judge the level of effectiveness for each person, using that rating continuum. The number of points on the rating scale can vary from three upward.
Research has indicated that five to nine scale points result in the highest quality of ratings.
Graphic rating scales are probably the most common rating format. One reason for this popularity is that the graphic rating scale category can be adapted to a wide variety of specific formats. Other reasons for their popularity include:
They are fairly easy to construct;
They have a fairly high level of user acceptability;
And they have face validity.
Graphic rating scales can be differentiated based on the type and amount of information presented in the anchors.
The most common format uses ambiguous adjectives (e.g., “marginal,” “average,” or “outstanding”) as anchors.
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Critical Incident Technique
The Critical Incident Technique (or CIT) is a set of procedures used for collecting direct observations of human behavior that have critical significance and meet methodically defined criteria.
These observations are then kept track of as incidents, which are then used to solve practical problems and develop broad psychological principles.
A critical incident can be described as one that makes a contribution—either positively or negatively—to an activity or phenomenon.
Critical incidents can be gathered in various ways, but typically respondents are asked to tell a story about an experience they have had.
CIT is a flexible method that usually relies on five major areas.
The first is determining and reviewing the incident,
then fact-finding, which involves collecting the details of the incident from the participants.
When all of the facts are collected, the next step is to identify the issues.
Afterwards a decision can be made on how to resolve the issues based on various possible solutions.
The final and most important aspect is the evaluation, which will determine if the solution that was selected will solve the root cause of the situation and will cause no further problems.
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Who Should Evaluate Employee Performance?
An employee’s performance may be rated by a number of people.
The immediate supervisor most commonly assesses the performance of subordinates, and most employees prefer this.
Supervisory assessments reinforce authority relationships in an organization and are frequently see as the primary function distinguishing a superior from a subordinate.
Problem: Because the superior-subordinate relationship itself is affected by so many factors, supervisory ratings are easily biased.
Peer ratings (sometime self-ratings) have prove acceptable both in terms of reliability and validity…
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Mager’s Performance Analysis
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Characteristics of an Effective Appraisal System…
Ultimately performance appraisal systems should be aligned with an organization’s mission and culture, and even though different systems are likely identifying the same employees as high or low performers:
First: Because missions (and cultures) are different, it’s wise to utilize the appraisal system suitable for the needs of the organization.
Second: Raters should have the opportunity, ability, and desire to rate employees accurately…
Third: Appraisal systems should be more in line with occupation-specific job descriptions in order for the organization to structure itself along team lines…
Fourth: Appraisal system must be able to capture and measure the employee’s motivational needs especially in the area of self-improvement…
Fifth, The effectiveness of the system should be subjectively grounded on a foundation of trust within the organization and open communication between the person being rated and the rater.
Sixth: The most important characteristic of an effective appraisal system relates to criteria used to select supervisors…
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The Human Dynamics of the Appraisal Process…
Question: Even though, feedback is essential to goal accomplishment and productivity, why were appraisal systems regarded so lightly prior to judicial scrutiny and the emphasis on pay-for-performance?
Not all employees were interested in quality productivity.
As the case load increased of the income-maintenance worker (because of budgetary constraints) the emphasis was on quantity at the expense of quality.
Because the visibility and tangibility of these reports many folks were limiting the use of the data just to find out what motivates the individual worker.
Because of reservations in the way information was gathered concerns for the reliability and validity of the instrument became an issue of concern.
Question: What three factors that can contribute to success of the process…
Goal setting during the interview…
Encouragement of the subordinate participation in the interview…
Support of the rater expressed in terms of encouragement, constructive guidance, and sincere, specific praise of the subordinate.
Note: Criticism from superior to subordinate produces mixed results…
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Performance Appraisal, The Sanctions Process, and Fairness..
Question: What is the difference between discipline and punishment?
Discipline is a formal way for an organization to preform the sanctions function by letting employees know they have violated an organizational expectation and by imposing negative consequences (punishment).
A performance appraisal is a critical precursor to disciplining an employee for poor performance unless
the discipline involves a performance incident that is clear policy violation that places the organization at a legal or financial risk.
If a third party is called upon to make a judgement about the fairness of the discipline, it is crucial to establish an environment of organizational justice.. This requires:
Preset expectations; accurate observations of behavior, and a written record of the discussion.
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