Performance Management Flashcards
performance management (def)
- the process of how an organization manages and aligns all of its resources to achieve high performance (text)
- efforts directed at ensuring that organizational goals and objectives are being realized
two main parts of performance management
- performance management is a CONTINUOUS process
- ALIGNMENT - performance management is a shared vision within the organization, with all employees understanding how their individual performance contributes to organizational performance
two main categories (purposes) of performance management
- developmental
2. administrative
developmental (purpose of performance management)
- the ultimate goal of performance management is performance improvement (textbook)
- a key element of successful performance management systems is that employees are provided with feedback that highlights their job-related strengths and weaknesses (textbook)
administrative (purpose of performance management0
- a key source of info for such things as making salary adjustments, deciding who should be promoted or recognized for exceptional performance, and identifying individuals who should be terminated (textbook)
two types of performance data
- soft / subjective data
2. hard / objective criteria
soft / subjective data (examples0
- judgmental data
- performance appraisal (ratings)
hard / objective criteria (examples)
- production, sales, absesnteeism
biggest problem with human judgement
- errors and biases
two often cited problems with performance appraisals
- managers tend to be too lenient (among other errors)
2. employees tend to react defensively to criticism
leniency / severity
- a type of rating error in which the rater assesses a disproportionately large number of ratees as performing well (positive leniency) or poorly (negative leniency) in contrast to their true level of performance (textbook)
- caused because raters apply personal standards derived from their own standards or past experiences
- most lenient raters are low in conscientiousness and high in agreeableness
- similar to teachers being “tough graders” or “easy graders”
issues with leniency
- comparison across supervisors is difficult
- comparison among employees is difficult
- hard to prove it exists
halo error
- a type of rating error in which the rater assesses the ratee as performing well on a variety of performance dimensions, despite having credible knowledge of only a limited number of performance dimensions
- based on raters general opinion of employee
- rating someone similar on all dimensions
central tendency
- a type of rating error in which the rater assesses a disproportionately large number of ratees as performing in the middle or central part of a distribution of rated performance in contrast to their true level of performance
- refers to the rater’s unwillingness to assign extreme - high or low - ratings
- rate everyone as average
- may occur if rater is not familiar with ratee
primary / recency
- rater only remembers the first and last impression of ratee
other errors / biases
- escalation of commitment and self fulfilling prophecy
- general biases and stereotypes
rating issues
- leniency
- halo
- central tendency
- recency / primary
- other general errors
how performance appraisals can be improved
- focus on work, not person
- focus on why, not who
- focus on organization, not individual
- use constant, open dialog
- train the appraisers
- use better rating scales / formats
rater training
- train to:
1. recognize errors
2. recognize performance standards (frame of reference training) - results of training are mixed
- the process of educating raters to make more accurate assessments of performance, typically achieved by reducing the frequency of halo, leniency, and central tendency errors.
three assessment catergories
- employee comparison
- graphic rating scales
- behavioral checklist
employee comparison methods (three) (type of assessment category)
- rank-order
- paired comparison
- forced distribution
rank order (from employee comparison methods)
- overall performance or dimensions
- forced variance
- difficult at middle levels
- time consuming and tedious
- central tendency: eliminate - have to distribute everyone
- leniency: eliminated
- halo: reduced if dimensional rank
paired comparison (from employee comparison methods)
- version of rank order
- each employee compared to others
- many comparisons = n(n-1)/12
forced distribution (from employee comparison methods)
- assumes performance is normally distributed
- 10% lowest an highest
- 20% as below and above average
- 40% as average
graphic rating scales (type of assessment category)
- most common method
- more absolute than relative
- general assessment of traits / performance
- distinguished among two main factors:
a. specificity of anchors
b. clarity of factors
behavioral checklist (type of assessment category)
- focused on observable job behaviors
- job analysis is critical
- critical incidents are typically the basis
- need to quantify these to assess performance
weighted checklists (behavioral checklist)
- development:
1. each incident is rated by experts
2. these rating are averaged
a. one value per incident
forced-choice checklists (behavioral checklist)
- choose most appropriate incident from a group of 3-5 that best describes the employee
- all incidents are either + or -
- eliminates good or bad responses
behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS) (behavioral checklist)
- rating scale with specific behavioral anchors
- development:
1. general list of critical incidents
2. categorize into dimensions
3. retranslation by different SMEs
4. rate each incident on degree of effective performance
5. use rated incidents as rating scale anchors - advantages:
a. very job relevent
b. errors usually reduced
c. employee involvement - disadvantages;
a. very time consuming
b. costly
c. job specific
d. may be rating hypothetical behavior
behavioral observation scales (BOS) (behavioral checklist)
- frequency of critical incident is rated
- total performance score is sum of ratings
mixed-standard rating scale
- generate three critical incidents for each job dimension/area (good, average, or poor)
- all incidents are put in random order
- rate each employee as:
a. better than…
b. worse than…
c. same as…
… behavior described in critical incident
