Question

After spending several weeks on the job, Erica was surprised to discover that her father had not formally evaluated any employee's performance for all th years that he had owned the business. Erica's father's position was that he had too many other priorities and this just fell lower on the list - boosting sales, lowering costs, and keeping the lights on. Additionally, he noted that many employees didn't stick around long enough to be appraised anyway. Furthermore, he contended that manual workers such as those doing the pressing and the cleaning did periodically get positive feedback in terms of praise for a job well done or criticism if things didn't look right during one of his swings through the store. Similarly, he was never shy about telling managers about store problems so that they too, got some feedback over time.

This informal feedback notwithstanding, Erica believes that a more formal appraisal approach is required. She believes that there are criteria such as quality, quantity, attendance, and punctuality that should be evaluated periodically even if a worker is paid based on how much he or she produces. Erica also feels quite strongly that the managers need to have a list of quality standards for matters such as store cleanliness, efficiency, safety, and adherence to budget on which they know they are formally evaluated.

1. Develop a performance appraisal method for the workers and the managers in each store. Discuss and describe your development process and reasoning for the process you developed. What are the goals and aims of your developed appraisal system

Answer 1

The primary objective of performance management system is to evaluate the overall performance of an employee in the company. PMS helps the company to have a performance snapshot of the overall employees of the company. The recognition of performance can be done by adapting either of the given performance appraisal methods:

• Behavioral method
  • Commonly known as BARS i.e. behaviorally anchored rating system
  • In this method, supervisors are required to evaluate the behavior of the employee with the help of a rating scale
  • The process takes the employees’ actions into consideration
  • Some of the scales used in this process are forced choice method, graphic rating scale method, etc.
• Traits method
  • In this method, the employee is evaluated, based on the traits, which he displayed at the workplace
  • Traits are, nothing but the common characteristics portrayed by individuals like work ethics, attitude, leadership, appearance, etc.
  • The supervisor evaluates the traits, displayed by the employee and rates him or her
  • This rating can be subjected to favoritism and bias
  • A checklist for the evaluation of traits displayed by the employee, is usually used by the supervisors
• Results method
  • This is the most commonly and quite popularly used method for evaluating the performance of employees
  • The evaluation of the employee is done, based on the accomplishments or performance conducted by him
  • Usually the performance objectives are discussed between the supervisor and the employee and set, before the commencement of a performance year
  • Two commonly used methods, used under this, are MBO and Balanced scorecard

In my views, the results based approach is the most fair and effective method for performance evaluation. Processes like Management by objective or MBO and Balanced scorecard can be used to evaluate the fulfillment of performance objectives in the stipulated time period, quite accurately. Accordingly the high performers can be rewarded in the best possible way.