Question

Discussion Question: The types of performance metrics make a big difference in the behaviors of employees and managers. For example, reflect on the Mattel toy recalls from a few years ago and the more recent Toyota recalls.

Identify why firms need the correct performance metrics to drive quality?

What effect do performance metrics have on short term or long term behaviors?

What can be done to keep performance metrics in alignment with the quality management initiatives?

How should employee’s performance be linked with the organizations performance metrics?

Answer 1

The types of performance metrics make a big difference in the behaviors of employees and managers. For example, reflect on the Mattel toy recalls from a few years ago and the more recent Toyota recalls.

Firms need the correct performance metrics to drive quality: This is a very sensitive topic because performance measurement, ratings are directly linked with the employees career and earning, for which they are coming to the plant. This is the top most important point for the employees. Firms needs the correct performances, metric to drive quality are due to following reasons

• Employee motivation is going to be affected by the performance metric, hence its correctness will definitely improve the employee motivation.
• Employee desire for quality work will be purely depends upon the treatment/response, he gets in terms of performance measurement in ethical and correct ways.
• The ethical performance measurement and right rating will drive the employee to work for the organization in true sense and will strive for quality work in the organization.
• The behavioral and cultural changes are mainly due to ethical and true performance rating of the employees.

Effect performance metrics have on short term or long term behaviors are as below:

• Short term behaviors: The performance metric will have the direct effect on the behavior of the employee on short term. If the employee gets correct performance measurement and receives good rating, his motivation level for the year will be very high and he will perform better and will strive for quality work. If the performance was not measured correctly, the he will be upset and de-motivated for the whole year.
• Long term behaviors: If the employee gets the correct performance measurement, then the long term impact will be that the employee will continue to carry out good quality work and will always be motivated in the organization, and vice versa if he did not gets the correct performance measurements at the plant for his work.

To keep performance metrics in alignment with the quality management initiatives: Performance metric should be the part of the quality management initiatives and these should be measure in the correct and ethical ways, so that employees gets the feeling that the performance in the organization is measured in right sense and rating are proportional to the performances of the employees.

Employee’s performance be linked with the organizations performance metrics: The employees performance should be linked with organization performance. The organizational performance objective should be divided into employees work objective so that they if employee gets superior result on their objective, then the company‘s objective will also gets the superior results.