Unit 9 Final
Pegasus86
S_GillmerUnit7Assignment.docx.pptxPerformance Appraisals
Stephanie A. Gillmer
9/15/2020
Stephanie A. Gillmer
Purdue Global University
HR 435-01 Compensation
Dr. Ileana Felipe
September 15, 2020
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Problems WITH PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS IN COMPANY LEADERSHIP
Performance appraisals as a lecture
Performance appraisal and Employee Development
Performance appraisals and pay
Performance appraisals as a lecture can be a problem for the leadership in the organization. Leadership needs to keep in mind that performance appraisals are not a one-way lecture about what the employee did well on or how the employee needs to improve (Heathfield, 2020). When lecturing to an employee about negative feedback, the employee tends not to hear anything else; even if it follows with positive performance, they shut down thinking about what they did wrong.
When conducting a performance appraisal, it doesn’t always focus on developing the employee’s skills and abilities (Heathfield, 2020). The purpose of the evaluation is to offer developmental feedback to help the employee grow in their skills and abilities to contribute to the organization. Leadership should have a repour with the employees to have a conversation about expectations and wants and need from the employee evaluated.
When giving an employee a performance appraisal, it is not the time to discuss the amount of pay they will receive. Discussion of compensation can interrupt their ability to learn and grow; employees can take to hiding and covering-up problems in the future to get a fair evaluation. Leadership needs to keep in mind that the employees can set you up to be blindsided by problems or issues in the future (Heathfield, 2020).
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Problems with Merit pay
Conflict among employees
Disintegration of team unity
Distribution challenges
When rewarding an employee with merit pay, it can cause conflict because the employees tend to compare their results with one another. Some of the employees will feel the system is unfair because no matter how hard they work, they may not earn any incentives. That will lead employees to feel unmotivated and unimportant to the company and leadership.
When there is disintegration in a team, the employees are in it for themselves. It can cause confrontation and an unsafe work environment. Personal goals are more important than the team goals, therefore not beneficial to the company (Benefits and Compensation, 2013). Some employees may start to feel jealous because top performers may seem more valuable and more important than them.
To distributing merit reward, the pay can be a challenge in the economy with merit pools of 2 or 3% and still give top performers an adequate award.
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Improving performance appraisal system
Uniform evaluation cycles
Regular coaching and feedback
Formal interim reviews
The leadership needs to build a healthy performance plan before conducting the performance appraisal. The evaluation cycle should be completed by the management with ample time to write good evaluations, ensuring consistency between each employee, and allow management a way to assess individual contributions to organize goals (Office of Financial Management, 2019).
Leadership must give regular coaching and feedback to each employee. Feedback needs to be ongoing to eliminate holes in the evaluation process. Leadership needs to focus on supporting employees and give them time to improve their performance with guidance.
For employees to be more successful, management needs to consider more than one evaluation during the year. More evaluations give employees that are struggling more than others a chance to get feedback and assistance on where they need help.
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Improving Merit pay system
Merit pay is effective
Promotes healthy competition
Motivation
The merit pay system will be useful if leadership has clear communication. Communication needs to be improved for the flow of information between participants and staff to be precise. For contact to improve, leadership must practice and share information about the parameters and rules of the plan.
Leadership needs to encourage each employee to work hard to achieve their best capabilities. When employees deliver their best results, it benefits the team and company as a whole. Employees enjoy talking about their success in the company among their coworkers and want to be recognized. Having healthy competition between coworkers is healthy as long as it doesn’t turn into a negative for the team.
When skilled and committed employees are not recognized for a job well done, they can easily be unmotivated. Merit pay offers a way to encourage motivation. When employees perform well, they are aware of the skills they have to offer and enjoy challenges to achieve higher goals that link to monetary incentives (Benefits and Compensation, 2013). Merit pay recognizes and rewards employees that deserve recognition for doing their best and being loyal and helping the company.
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Early communication improvement What could have been done differently
Online, classroom, or blended training
Course length
Frequency
Communication that can be improved and done differently consists of in-person training, course length, frequency of practice, and timing at which training is given. In-person training allows for elaborating on practical training and role-playing to help leaders overcome challenges of communication with their employees face-to-face. New management needs to have the same routine so there are clear and specific goals for what the company expects from their leadership. As an HR manager, there would be small sections given that make the training more intimate and more comfortable to conduct personal training.
Course length to make the training as effective as possible would consist of an 8-hour training class. There will also be refresher courses throughout the year, and online updates per company rule changes. The managers also have reviews, and more training will depend on how well they are working with employees.
Frequency of appraisal reviews will conduct at least yearly for management to determine their strengths and weaknesses in communicating with employees. The better leadership is doing, the more motivated they will be passing it down to employees. Overall this will have a significant effect on the companies success.
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Early communication improvement What could have been done differently Continued
Timing
Timing on the performance appraisal training is vital for management to deliver the evaluations effectively (Tyler, 2018). Future training will have quarterly courses for all management conducting appraisals, including refresher courses 2-hours, and one day class before reviews performed yearly. In the organization, all departments will have the same appraisal date, so training courses do not vary.
Having appraisal training classes planned out allows for HR to prepare and make adjustments on what works for the company and more effective training for management conducting the evaluations.
The organization needs to have a positive work environment; it is essential to develop and implement effective learning.
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Five methods to improve performance appraisal results
Improve appraisal formats
Select the right raters
Understand how raters process information
Train raters to rate more accurately
Improve rater motivation
To improve the appraisal format, communication, goal setting, and development tools for managers are all critical. Suggestions are welcome in training courses to improve the performance development planning process and create a performance development process checklist. When leadership is doing an appraisal with an employee, it is vital to be clear on their goals.
To select the right raters, it should be someone that will do the job well. The rater should have sufficient experience working with the employees evaluated to give honest and valid feedback (Simon, 2019). Raters should be familiar with the position they are observing for the participant to trust their input.
Raters need to process a lot of information; the rater needs to observe the behaviors of the employee. The rater encodes the action as a whole picture (don’t create a stereotype). The rater often needs to store information into memory. The rater later reviews the performance, observations, and impressions to relate to the relevance of the employee’s account. Lastly, the data can be discussed with other raters if it is a team to give employees more information on the final review.
Rater Error Training (RET) is a way to train raters to be more accurate. This form of reduces errors and biases (M., 2010). With proper training, raters should improve accuracy, decrease rater biases and mistakes (Park, 2017).
To improve rater motivation the individuals should feel they work they do is meaningful, valuable, and worthwhile. The rater builds skill variety, task identity and task significance that determines meaningful work they do.
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Promising method for American energy development
Rate Error Training
Rate error training is going to be the most promising method for American Energy development to use. RET covers five different types of rate errors; the first is distributional errors. Distributional errors include severity error, leniency error, and central tendency error. The severity error means the rater tends to give all employees low ratings. Leniency error is when the manager rates all employees well. Lastly, the central tendency error is when the rater provides all employees the same or close to the exact score (M., 2010). Leniency error is the most common in performance appraisals.
Although it may serve the employee in getting a reward having good remarks already given, it is overall not helpful to the employee, rater, or the company. If the manager is lenient, the employee learns nothing, doesn’t gain any skills or feedback on what they did right or wrong more than likely. Being lenient can also affect the manager and company because it could cause a lack of motivation from the worker, and teamwork can dissipate if they don’t feel they are doing anything wrong.
Having expert training and frequent training will keep leadership ahead of the curve. It should be the central focus and reminder in each training session. Each manager should be honest to themselves and the employee to keep the department focused and motivation high.
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References:
Benefits and Compensation. (2013, January 20). Salary Reports, 2013 Wage Forecast, Market Compensation: Wage Watch I brief Blog. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://ibrief.wagewatch.com/2013/01/30/the- pros-and-cons-of-merit-pay/
Heathfield, S. (2020, May). 4 Problems With Performance Appraisals: Where Do Managers Go Wrong? Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://www.thebalancecareers.com/performance-appraisal-problems- 1918857
Iconixx. (2019, September 12). How to implement an effective merit pay system. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://iconixx.com/blog/merit-pay- systems
M., M. (2010, January 25). Expertbase. Retrieved September 16, 2020, from https://www.expertbase.org/a386-development-of-rater-training-programs-
References Continued
Office of Financial Management. (2019). Improving Performance Evaluations. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://ofm.wa.gov/state-human- resources/workforce- data-planning/research-resources/best-practices-and- benchmarks/improving- performance-evaluations
Park, S. (2017). Motivating raters through work design: Applying the job characteristics model to the performance appraisal context. Cogent Psychology, 4(1). doi:10.1080/23311908.2017.1287320
Simon, R. (2019, December 17). Tips for Selecting 360° Raters. Retrieved September 16, 2020, from https://employee-performance.com/blog/tips-for-selecting-360-raters
Tyler, K. (2018, April 11). Train Managers, Maximize Appraisals. Retrieved September 16, 2020, from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/1212- performance-appraisal-training.aspx
