Performance Management and Appraisal

1. Chapter 10 Performance Managementand Appraisal The most effective way to do Performance Management…video cameras Video HERE

2. Leaders are Readers • How to be a Star at Work 1999 Robert E Kelley • “What average performers think it is: The talent for brownnosing and schmoozing in the workplace to help me get noticed by the right people. What start performers know it to be: A work strategy that enables me to navigate the competing interests in an organization to promote cooperation, address conflicts and get things done.”

3. Performance Management and Execution • Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? (2003) • Louis Gerstner • “Fixing IBM was all about execution. We had to stop looking for people to blame, stop tweaking the internal structure and systems. I wanted no excuses.”

4. Exercise • Performance Management for Dr. Avey • Pick one of the following: • Below Expectations • Meets Expectations • Exceeds Expectations • What is your criteria? • Write it down • Discuss later

5. Preface: Global Cultural Differences in Performance Management • Uncommon for managers in other cultures to rate employees or to give direct feedback. • Younger subordinates do not engage in joint discussions with their managers due their high respect for authority and age. • Criticism from superiors is viewed as personally devastating rather than as useful feedback.

6. Jack Welch (Winning) • Be a meritocracy through differentiation of people. • “Categorize your people as the top 20, middle 70 and bottom 10 percent who turn over in 1 year or less. You manage the 70 by identifying people who have the potential to move up and cultivating them. You manage the top 20 by rewarding them like crazy.” • “Use a rigorous non-bureaucratic evaluation system, monitored for integrity with the same intensity of Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance.”

7. Top Issues in Performance Management • 1. Bommer et al meta analysis results- Manager performance ratings are TERRIBLE • 2. Procedural Justice- need to know HOW decision was made (examples of good and bad performance) • 3. Standards are clear and communicated in advance • 4. Rating instruments must be simple and easy for the rater and ratee to understand • 5. Ratees (employees) must have input into the process

8. Components of Effective Performance Management

9. What is Performance Management • Performance Management • Processes used to identify, encourage, measure, evaluate, improve, and reward employee performance • Provide information to employees about their performance. • Clarify organizational performance expectations. • Identify the development steps that are needed to enhance employee performance. • Document performance for personnel actions. • Provide rewards for achieving performance objectives.

10. What is Employee Performance • Performance • What an employee does and does not do. • Quantity of output • Quality of output • Timeliness of output • Presence at work • Cooperativeness

11. Types of Performance Information

12. Performance Standards • What are Performance Standards • Expected levels of performance • Benchmarks, goals, and targets • What are characteristics of well-defined standards • Realistic • Measurable • Clearly understood

13. How do we ensure our system is legally defensible • Legally Defensible PA System: • Appraisal criteria based on job analysis • Absence of disparate impact and evidence of validity • Formal evaluation criterion that limit managerial discretion • Formal rating instrument linked to job duties and responsibilities • Personal knowledge of and contact with ratee • Training of supervisors in conducting appraisals • Review process to prevent undue control of careers • Counseling to help poor performers improve

14. Philosophical Challenges to Performance Appraisal

15. Who Conducts Appraisals • Supervisors who rate their subordinates • Employees who rate their supervisors • Team members who rate each other • Employees’ self-appraisal • Outside sources rating employees • Multisource (360° feedback) appraisal

16. Employee Rating of Managers • Advantages • Helps in identifying competent managers • Serves to make managers more responsive to employees • Can contribute to the career development of managers • Disadvantages • Negative reactions by managers to employee ratings • Subordinates’ fear of reprisals may inhibit them from giving realistic (negative) ratings

17. Team/Peer Rating • Advantages • Helps improve the performance of lower-rated individuals • Peers have opportunity to observe other peers. • Peer appraisals focus on individual contributions to teamwork and team performance. • Disadvantages • Can negatively affect working relationships. • Can create difficulties for managers in determining individual performance. • Organizational use of individual performance appraisals can hinder the development of teamwork Has anyone evaluated a team member?

18. Multisource Appraisal

19. Category Scaling Methods • Graphic Rating Scale • A scale that allows the rater to indicate an employee’s performance on a continuum of job behaviors. John has good customer service skills. 1 (Disagree), 3 (Neutral), 5 (Agree) • Drawbacks • Restrictions on the range of possible rater responses • Differences in the interpretations of the meanings of scale items and scale ranges by raters

20. Behavioral/Objective Methods • Behavioral Rating Approach • Assesses employees’ behaviors instead of other characteristics • Consists of a series of scales created by: • Identifying important job dimensions • Creating statements describing a range of desired and undesirable behaviors (anchors) • Example- Next Slide

21. Behaviorally-Anchored Rating Scale for Customer Service Skills

22. Category Rating Methods • Checklists • A performance appraisal tool that uses a list of statements or work behaviors that are checked by raters. • Can be quantified by applying weights to individual checklist items. • Ranking • A listing of all employees from highest to lowest in performance. • Drawbacks • Does not show size of differences in performance between employees • Implies that lowest-ranked employees are unsatisfactory performers. • Becomes an unwieldy process if the group to be ranked is large.

23. Comparative Methods (cont’d) • Forced Distribution • Performance appraisal method in which ratings of employees are distributed along a bell-shaped curve. • Drawbacks • Assumes a normal distribution of performance. • Resistance by managers to placing individuals in the lowest or highest groups. • Providing explanation for placement in a higher or lower grouping can be difficult. • Is not readily applicable to small groups of employees.

24. Forced Distribution on a Bell-Shaped Curve

25. Narrative Methods • Critical Incident • Manager keeps a written record of highly favorable and unfavorable employee actions. • Drawbacks • Variations in how managers define a “critical incident” • Time involved in documenting employee actions • Most employee actions are not observed and may become different if observed • Employee concerns about manager’s “black books” • Essay • Manager writes a short essay describing an employee’s performance. • Drawback- Depends on the managers’ writing skills and their ability to express themselves. • Teachers, BECU Corporate

26. Criticisms of Performance Appraisal • Focus is too much on the individual contribution and does little to develop employees. • Employees and supervisors believe the appraisal process is seriously flawed. • Appraisals are inconsistent, short-term oriented, subjective, and useful only at the extremes of performance.

27. Management by Objectives (MBO) • Management by Objectives • Specifying the performance goals that an individual and his or her manager agree the employee will to try to attain within an appropriate length of time. • Key MBO Ideas • Employee involvement creates higher levels of commitment and performance. • Encourages employees to work effectively toward achieving desired results. • Performance measures should be measurable and should define results.

28. What MBO Tries to Accomplish •  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen R Covey (2004) • “#2 Begin with the End in Mind” • The HP Way, David Packard (2005) • “We thought if we could get everyone to agree on what our objectives were and to understand what we were trying to so, then we could turn them loose and they would move in a common direction.“ • This is MBO

29. The MBO Process This is transactional leadership- contingent reward Job Review and Agreement Development of Performance Standards Objective Setting Continuing Performance Discussions

30. Training of Managers and Employees • Appraisal Training Topics: • Performance criteria and job standards that should be considered • How to communicate positive and negative feedback • How to avoid common rating errors (Next Slide)

31. Common Rater Errors

32. Appraisal Interview Hints

33. Exercise • Back to the exercise: What was your criteria for your decision? • Would you use different criteria/different method? • Given the importance of results, how SHOULD Dr. Avey be evaluated?

34. WSJ 12/2009 Article