BUSN460 week 4

Performance Appraisal

Introdudction

Effectively managing the "people side" of an organization is as important to its success as is the effective management of traditional business areas such as finance and marketing. The "people side" of an organization is typically referred to as human resources management. It encompasses several important functions that include: recruitment and selection of new employees, employee training and development, performance appraisal systems, and compliance with fair employment practices laws.

This episode is focused on CanGo's performance appraisal system. One of the most important and most difficult managerial activities is providing meaningful and candid feedback to subordinates. It can be especially difficult to provide direct feedback to an under-performing subordinate in a face-to-face meeting. Managers are well aware that reactions to negative feedback are hard to predict. Some employees may realize the need for improvement while others may get very upset when they hear that their job performance is considered to be unsatisfactory.

Imagine you are a manager and you are faced with the prospect of telling a poorly performing subordinate that he or she must improve. How would you go about doing this? What if your subordinate reacts badly and blames you for his or her poor performance? What if he or she refuses to sign the performance appraisal form leading to a review from the director of human resources management department? You could give this person a good rating, but then what would the rest of your subordinates think of your abilities as a manager?

Here's another possibility: suppose you are a manager and you have developed a friendly relationship with your employees. How easy do you suppose it would be to sit down with one of these employees and tell them that they are performing poorly?

Warren is faced with this very problem in the Introductory Video. He must appraise the performance of a poorly performing subordinate, a task with which he is clearly uncomfortable. Watch the video now and consider what you would do in this situation.

Video 5

Elizabeth: -and it involves getting into a new market.

Gail: Okay, let’s go to it.

Andrew: If the main issue is control, there’s ways to protect ourselves and our interests.

Elizabeth: This is my company.

Maria: And if heads are going to roll, they say start at the top.

Warren: Yes!

Narrator: Welcome to the Mastering Management episode “Performance Appraisal”.

Gail: You look green.

Nick: I’m okay. Thanks, Gail.

Gail: Why are you sitting here?

Nick: Just gathering myself, you know.

Gail: Well come on. We’re late; let’s go.

Nick: Maybe I, um – maybe I should go home today, huh? What do you think?

Gail: What’s wrong with you?

Nick: I’m getting my performance evaluation from the Coach, okay?

Gail: Oh, come – all right. Open the window.

Nick: No.

Gail: Come on, get – come on, Nick, get out of the car.

Nick: I can’t hear you.

Gail: Are you done?

What is wrong with you?

Nick: You don’t understand, Gail! He’s going to kill me!

Gail: Oh, come on. All right, why do you say that?

Nick: Why do – why do I say-

Gail: Yeah.

Nick: Why do I say that? Okay.

Gail: You’re so overdramatic.

Nick: I will tell you why. Because he knows I was on duty when the servers crashed more than a few

times, okay?

Gail: All right, what was it, a computer error?

Nick: No. All right, maybe I should’ve paid more attention than I did. But what am I supposed to do,

Gail, sit there and stare at the monitor for eight hours a day?

And then there was the time that – that I messed up the computer database. Remember that?

Gail: That was you?

Nick: And it crashed for two days. Yeah, and it lost all my stuff, made me fall behind.

Gail: All right, look, maybe-

Nick: I mean, I get along with everybody, right? I mean people like me. I keep the energy up in an otherwise dull kind of job, right?

Gail: Yeah. You’re a real inspiration.

Nick: I am, aren’t I? Huh? [Laughs] Of course I am. He’s got to see that, right? Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Gail: Ugh! God.

[Change Scenery]

Nick: Sorry. Sorry.

So, Coach, you want – you want to see me?

Warren: Yeah, Nick. We’ve just got to, you know, see how you’re doing.

Nick: Yeah, well, everything – everything’s great. Thanks, Coach.

Warren: Nick, I mean, you know, officially.

Nick: Yeah. [Laughs]

Warren: Let’s just get through this, all right? Let’s see. First we’ve got quantity of work. It was good; I gave you a three. Quality of work. That was – that was good too; I gave you a three there too. Appearance, um – um, yeah, you know, you look fine.

Nick: Yeah?

Warren: Yeah. Yeah. I gave you a four. Attitude, three. I mean, you know, it’s good. Things are good. You know, I mean there’s always room for, you know, just – just keep an eye on the services, okay?

Nick: You’ve got it, Coach. You’ve got it.

Warren: I mean there’s nothing really terrible, except maybe some of your jokes. You know, you could use some new material.

Nick: Oh you. Oh you. [Laughs]

Warren: What can I say? Good work.

Nick: Thank you, Coach. Is, uh, is that it?

Warren: Yeah, I’ll see you around.

Nick: Okay.

[Change Scenery]

Gail: So how’d it go?

Nick: Huh? Oh, oh. Great! Great! [Laughs] I don’t know what I was worried about, Gail; I really don’t. Hang onto that for me, would you, Gail? Thanks.

Gail: Unbelievable. That is unbelievable.

Narrator: Now move onto the brief summary of concepts and then to the interactive exercises.

Video 6- The Economic Way of Thinking

The ingredients of an economic way of thinking include a healthy dose of common sense and a pinch or two of more formal tools and concepts. In this episode, we'll focus on two key components of the economic way of thinking: scarcity and opportunity cost. When it comes to our everyday decision making, many of us use these ideas, but we often don't realize it. Even though we all know the expression "there's no such thing as a free lunch," we can forget that scarcity is a fundamental feature of the world we live in. Because resources are limited, every decision we make involves opportunity costs. When we make a decision to do one thing, we give up the opportunity to do something else. Thus, there are tradeoffs in every decision we make.

In the Introductory Video, you'll see that the decision at CanGo to launch an initial public offering (IPO) demands extra time and efforts on the part of key staff members. That means that those staff members have less time and energy available for other projects. As important as the IPO is for the future of CanGo, the company must still "take care of business." Forgetting about opportunity costs could be very costly for CanGo. By evaluating the tradeoffs involved, the managers at CanGo are able to make better decisions about what resources to devote to each of CanGo's projects. As you watch, think about the opportunity cost of each decision the management team makes. Are there "hidden" opportunity costs the team is not taking into account?

Elizabeth: -and it involves getting into a new market.

Gail: Okay, let’s go to it.

Andrew: If the main issue is control, there’s ways to protect ourselves and our interests.

Elizabeth: This is my company.

Maria: And if heads are going to roll, they say start at the top.

Warren: Yes!

Narrator: Welcome to the Mastering Economics episode “Economic Way of Thinking”.

Elizabeth: All right, look, we’ve had our successes, but now we have to look to the future. What’s going to help us grow? Turn us into a mighty oak?

Maria: Fertilizer.

Elizabeth: No, come on. No, branching out. Trees need to branch out. If they’re confined they’ll die.

Andrew: Or grow in a very straight line.

Maria: Boring.

Elizabeth: All right, look, we are operating on a super highway. The possibilities for us are fairly endless. We sell books; now why not sell e-books? What about streaming audio and video? We could offer that.

Andrew: I think we need to be broader than that. I mean what’s cutting edge? Hip? Hot? Online gaming is riding a wave. MP3 files are the preferred way to listen to use music.

Clark: I agree. Expanse into new ventures is always popular with investors when you’re going for the IPO.

Ethel: But we’re not settled on an IPO yet, are we?

Elizabeth: No, no. Not yet. Not yet.

Clark: But if we continue to grow we will need to raise capital, and unless someone’s been hiding a wealthy relative somewhere, it’s going to be an IPO.

Ethel: We’re talking about expanding so quickly.

Clark: Which means that everyone in this room is going to make a lot of money.

Warren: Here here.

Clark: Especially – especially Diamond Liz.

Elizabeth: Oh, well, Diamond Liz.

[Change Scenery]

Warren: So you’re saying we don’t have any money. Is that why we have these so-called sandwiches for lunch?

Ethel: Listen, new development is the key to the future.

Andrew: Grow or die, that’s how dot-coms work.

Elizabeth: Well, we’re all in agreement about that, Andrew. But we just don’t have the funds to bring in new people for all these new ventures right now.

Andrew: Well I just don’t want the competition to leave us in the dust.

Elizabeth: I understand that, but Maria and I feel that we have existing employees that we could bring up and put into these positions without upending the bottom.

Warren: Whoa. That’s going to cost you something, Liz. I mean you’ve got this lineup that works, you can’t just mess with it without expecting some consequences. You know, nothing’s for free.

Andrew: Oh, except this hockey puck. I mean lunch.

Narrator: Now move on to the brief summary of concepts and then to the interactive exercises.