Question

Factual Background

Congratulations. You have just been promoted to a Senior Manager position in the Finance Department. You now supervise five (5) employees who process payroll for a large successful publishing company. You have worked for the company for six (6) years and you’ve worked alongside the employees you now supervise the entire time.

You consider these coworkers who are now your subordinates as some of your closest friends. You often socialized after work, attended events together, and truly got along well with everyone – except for Jimmy – who habitually uses profanity, and dresses formally in an informal office environment. His work performance is also lower than the others, and he often tries to minimize his performance issues by using off-color humor. He usually goes along to all the social events, but you sometimes feel uncomfortable around him.

You are now required to conduct performance reviews for your team, but you have pre-existing negative feelings towards Jimmy, and very positive feelings toward the other coworkers.

Your Assignment:

Given your pre-existing feelings towards Jimmy and your other coworkers, how will you measure their performance fairly? As you prepare for the performance feedback session with Jimmy, which you want to be effective to change performance, what steps would you take to achieve this goal?

1-2 pages

Answer 1

Given your pre-existing feelings towards Jimmy and your other coworkers, how will you measure their performance fairly?

Given the pre existing feelings about jimmy, it is very much evident that there might be biases. Though, it wouldn’t be ethical on my end to let any bias interfere with the performance assessment of an employee, but since there have already been such negative and strongly negative feelings about Jimmy, there’s a greater probability that this could interfere with my assessment. More strongly, since I’m more friendly with the other employees, I would inch in providing a proper and positive feedback to the other employees who I am more friendly and in better terms with. I would want them to benefit from this assessment in every possible manner, and unconsciously, I would do that.

In order to eliminate this possibility, it would be better that I would carry out the assessment in a coded form. While reviewing the files and performance data, it would be better that the performance should be on the basis of employee code. Since, as I would not remember every employee code exactly, I would have to first assess fairly, followed by identifying the person whose evaluation has been done. Alternatively, I could also ask another senior of mine, who is neutral to the team, to help me with evaluation, such that even if I am inclined to some bias, it would be corrected by him. Also, it would be better to develop a logic plan along with identifying the scope and purpose of the process, such that if the evaluation would exactly fit the criteria, there would not be a negative feedback that could be given.

As you prepare for the performance feedback session with Jimmy, which you want to be effective to change performance, what steps would you take to achieve this goal?

In order to effectively achieve the goal of performance change, I would have to talk to jimmy with one to one contact. It would not help if jimmy was explained superficially. Since, there are serious performance flaws, jimmy has to be explained his mistakes in a proper form. There shouldn’t be any criticisms in explaining him his mistakes as any criticism would demoralise the person. The interaction has to be warm and comforting such that he would understand that his mistakes could be rectified with some amount of efforts. Everyone deserves a second chance, and it would be helpful if jimmy would be given the same, with a realisation of his mistakes, such that he could rectify them. Moreover, it would help if the results are not announced publicly, but given in the form of a feedback in one to one conversations such that no one would feel superior to the other.