Question

(TCO 5) Consider this scenario: John Hopken is the new supervisor of a team of 12 computer programmers. He has been in his position for 10 months, after being promoted to his position from programmer (where he had been in place for 8 years). The promotion was hard-won; four others on his team also applied for the promotion, and when he got his promotion, the other four employees who didn’t get the position were rather disgruntled. One of them lashed out in a meeting early on and called him a yes-man, but otherwise most of the issues have been undercurrents and rumor based. These four employees are referred to as Competitors 1, 2, and 3 and Competitor Yes-Man for the purposes of this question.

During the year, five older members of his team resigned, four through regular retirements and one after being accused of falsifying expense reports. None of the five were in the group of four who had competed against him for his position. John filled all five position openings with outside hires. Three of them had similar backgrounds to John’s—they all went to his alma mater for their computer degrees and like basketball. In fact, last week John and the three of them attended a Bulls game together. These employees will be referred to as Bulls 1, 2, and 3. The other two employees were both females he hired because HR told him he had to. (Up till now, there were no females on the team.) We’ll call them Lady 1 and 2. They don’t like basketball. Lady 1 was hired 6 months ago, and Lady 2 was hired last month.

Now, it is performance appraisal time. Assume each of these employees does a similar amount of work, produces relatively similar amounts of code, and does a good job. None of them create waves, and the new people have gotten their work under way and are working hard. Other than the yes-man meeting and one comment on the men’s room wall saying that “Hopken is a jerk,” things have mostly gone smoothly. John figures that one of the Competitors wrote that.

John is told by HR he has to do performance appraisals this month. He is told to rate his people on a scale of 1–4, where 1 is “not meeting expectations,” 2 is “too new to rate,” 3 is “meeting expectations,” and 4 is “exceeding expectations.” HR said that he must have no more than two 4s, no more than eight 3s, and at least two 1s or 2s. He asks an HR representative what “too new” means, and she says it applies to anyone who has not been in the position for 3 months or more.

He looks at the paperwork and his list, and 20 minutes later has his ratings done with a paragraph scribbled out to provide to his workers.

Here are his ratings and his support paragraph.

Bulls 1: 4: What a great guy—always comes through, works hard, fun loving, makes the day brighter for everyone

Bulls 2: 4: Team player—what a help—great worker and asset to the company

Bulls 3: 3: Always there for the work group—works steady and helpful to others, accurate coder

Lady 1: 3: Always there for the work group—works steady and helpful to others, accurate coder

Other 1: 3: Always there for the work group—works steady and helpful to others, accurate coder

Other 2: 3: Always there for the work group—works steady and helpful to others, accurate coder

Other 3: 3: Always there for the work group—works steady and helpful to others, accurate coder

Competitor 1: 3: Accurate coding and steady performer

Competitor 2: 3: Accurate coding and steady performer

Competitor 3: 3: Accurate coding and steady performer

Lady 2: 2: Too new to rate but next year should be great

Competitor YM: 1: Not a team player and can work harder to prevent discord

Please answer the following questions.

(1) What are the three major methods of conducting appraisals? Briefly explain each one. (12 points)

(2) What method is described here? Justify your answer. (12 points)

(3) Write a memo to HR explaining why you feel this method of performance evaluation needs improvement, and give three specific examples of the improvement you recommend based on the scenario above. (16 points)

Answer 1

1. Performance appraisal is an annual activity conducted in the organization to rate the performance of the employee in the past year. This activity provides clarity and awareness to the employee that what are his strengths and in which avenues, he needs to improve upon.

Three major types of performance appraisal are:

• Traits method
  • The employee is rated on his traits displayed at the workplace
  • Traits are the characteristics like attitude, work ethic, leadership, appearance, etc. that the individual has.
  • Supervisor is required to evaluate and rate the employee on the basis of the traits displayed by him at the workplace.
  • Can be subjected to bias
  • Supervisors usually use a checklist for evaluation of traits displayed by the employee
• Behavioral method
  • This method is also known as BARS i.e. behaviorally anchored rating system
  • Supervisors evaluate the behavior of the employee using a rating scale
  • The employees’ actions are taken into perspective
  • Some of the scales used are:
    • Graphic rating scale method
    • Forced choice method
• Results method
  • This is evaluation of the employee based on his accomplishments or fulfillment of certain tasks
  • The set of objectives are discussed between the supervisor and the employee and set at the start of the year
  • Management by objective or MBO evaluates the fulfillment of above objectives in the stipulated time period
  • Balanced scorecard can also be considered as a results method

2. The performance appraisal method used in this case is the graphic rating scale technique.

Graphic rating scale technique is a behavioral method, and is most commonly used performance appraisal method. A list of behaviors as per the job standard is given and the supervisor has to rate the employee’s performance in each behavior. Usually scale of 1-4 or 1-10 is used. this scale is called a discrete scale as the supervisor is effectively giving a rating to the employee based on the behavior displayed on the job.

The supervisor is also required to validate his ratings in the comment section. The comments help in easy comprehension of the reason behind the given rating.

In this case, John is asked by the HR to rate the employees on the scale of 1-4 where:

• 1= not meeting expectations
• 2=too new to rate
• 3=meeting expectations
• 4= exceeding expectations

John had also provided support paragraph to elucidate his comments and validate the ratings. It is a typical example of a 4-scale graphical rating method.

3. CONFIDENTIAL

To: HR Manager

From:    ABC

Date: 5 April 2018

Re.:        Concerns about company’s performance appraisal process

I am concerned that company’s current practice of performance management and appraisal is not appropriate. The graphic ratings scale method used by the company to evaluate an employee’s performance, does not give a holistic snapshot of his performance.

The main reasons why I feel that the current method is not fully effective in evaluating an employee’s performance are:

• Graphic ratings scale method is very subjective and totally depends on the observation of the supervisor
• This method is subjected to bias as the supervisor can easily give good ratings to his favorite subordinates
• The interpretation of employee’s behavior is totally based on the perception of the supervisor and is not validated by any other method
• No holistic analysis can be done on the employee’s performance based on this method. For example: John gave all the “Other” coders same rating and feedback. If the company needs to promote one employee from this cadre, performance appraisal cant be used as a basis for performance factualization

The improvements that can be done in this system are:

• Introduction of results oriented performance appraisal system. This system can holistically analyze the employee’s performance and gives a snapshot of his strengths and weaknesses.
• Usage of MBO to set the criteria on which the employee will be evaluated at the start of the year. This gives awareness to the employee as well so as what is expected out of his job.
• If using the current system of graphical ratings scale method, each rating must have a comment section, where the supervisor needs to validate the criteria for the rating. This might help in illustrating the employee’s strengths and weaknesses.