Performance Management Chapter 8 Flashcards
What is the goal of performance management?
To align individual employee performance with organizational objectives.
Individual performance is enhanced by clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and expectations for employees. And it’s also critical to provide regular feedback and support to help employees improve their performance and develop skills. We identify and address skill gpas, through training, mentoring, or coaching. We foster a culture of accountability and learning where employees strive for excellence. We recognize and reward high performers, boosting morale and job satisfaction.
When aligning organizational and individual performance goals, what is the difference between the cascading approach and the linking up approach?
With the cascading approach, goals flow from the top-down from the organizational level to divisions, units, teams, and individuals. It ensures organizational objectives are translated into actionable targets at each level.
With the linking up approach, goals are set from the bottom-up where individual or team contributions are aligned back to organizational objectives. This promotes employee involvement in goal setting and strengthens alignment through collaborative planning.
What are the pros and cons of the cascading approach to performance management?
Pros:
1) Clear alignment of goals to tangible outcomes
2) Provides clear direction and expectations from leadership
3) Simplifies communication
4) Ensures all departments and teams work cohesively towards shared objectives, avoiding conflicting priorities
Cons:
1) Rigid Structure and lack of flexibility. Goals may not account for specific challenges faces by divisions or individuals
2) Communication goes down many levels, so broken telephone can occur
3) Limited employee engagement because employees feel excluded from the process
What are the pros and cons of the linking up approach?
Pros:
1) Increased Employee Engagement
2) Enhanced Creativity and Innovation
3) Flexibility
Cons:
1) Employee goals may deviate from organizational priorities
2) Time Consuming Process
3) Different teams may have different goals, which creates a lack of cohesion in the organization
What is the balanced scorecard approach?
The balanced scorecard combines the performance measures of the total organization, integrating fianancial goals with customer satisfaction, internal processes, organizational growth, learning, and innovation.
What are the 6 uses of performance appraisal?
1) Admininistrative decisions: helps decide salary adjustments, or promotions
2) Feedback and Performance Management: constructive feedback and analysis of strengths fosters employee growth and productivity
3) Employee Development and Career Planning: individualized feedback helps employees plan their careers
4) Criteria for test validation: validate the relevance and fairness of selection tools
5) Training program: Identifying skill gaps and performance trends help design targeted training programs
6) Job Redesign: Offers insight into role challenges, enabling HR to redesign job responsibilities.
What is the circle of the performance appraisal process
Each thing leads to the last. Number 4 leads back to Number 1.
1) Performance Objectives: should be job related, practical, and based on performance standards
2) Measure Performance: they must be easy to use, reliable, and report on the critical behaviours that determine performance.
3) Communicate Feedback: Performance ratings and/or developmental feedback is communicated with the employee at a specified interval.
4) HR Records and Decisions: Maintaining records of employee performance for legal purposes to guide HR decisions.
What are performance objectives vs performance standards?
Performance objectives: Targets for employee performance which should be job related, practical, and based on performance standards.
Performance standards: Measurable benchmarks that may relate to quality, quantity, or time.
What are the four methods to measuring performance?
Direct measurement: The rater observes the employee’s performance firsthand. The focus is put on observable actions or behaviours, like watching employees complete a task. It’s particularly useful in roles with visible outputs like manufacturing or customer service. However, it can also be time-intensive and dependent on the rater’s ability to observe consistently and accurately.
Indirect measurement: Uses secondhand sources to evaluate performance when direct observation is impractical. Relies on feedback from others such as coworkers, customer complaints, or supervisor reports. It’s commonly applied in roles where direct supervision isn’t possible such as remote work. For instance a rater evaluates a remote salesperson’s performance based on client satisfaction surveys. An advantage is that it helps to gather broader perspectives, but a challenge is that there is a risk of bias or incomplete information from secondhand sources.
Objective measurement: Relies on quantifiable data that can be verified by others, making it less prone to bias. Involves metrics like slaes figures, production counts, or error rates. For instance, a warehouse employee is evaluated based on the number of items processed per hour with minimal errors. It’s highly valid because it eliminates personal bias and standardizes information. Challenges include that it may not capture qualitative aspects of performance, such as teamwork or leadership. It can also be affected by external factors beyond the employee’s control.
Subjective Measurement: Based on the rater’s opinion or judgement based on qualitative aspects of performance. Captures intangible elements like attitude, leadership, or interpersonal skills. Often used in combination with objective measures for a holistic view of performance. An example would be a manager rating an employee’s leadership ability during team projects based on their personal assessment. The challenges is that it has a high risk of bias, and can be inconsistent if it’s not paired with clear evaluation criteria.
What are comparative evaluation methods?
Comparative evaluation methods are often used to compare employee contributions or to allocate limited rewards. However, they can introduce challenges such as fairness perceptions and biases.
Ranking method: Manager rank employees from best to worst considering performance metrics, skills, and behaviours. It’s advantages are that it’s simple and quick to implement, especially in small teams, and clearly distinguishes high performers from underperformers. It’s challenges are subjectivity and bias, as well as the fact that poorly ranked employees will have morale issues. For instance a slaes manager ranks team members based on quarterly sales figures.
Forced distribution: Managers evaluate employees and assign them to categories like “outstanding”, “satisfactory”, or “needs improvement” on a bell curve distribution. An advantage is that it differentiates employees, and ensures that resource allocation like promotions or training aligns with performance levels. However, this method is subject to bias, can demotivate employees, and lacks nuance as two similar employees can result in one being “outstanding” and another as “satisfactory.” For example a large corporation assigns 10 percent of employees to “outstanding”, 20 percent to “exceeds expectations” 50 percent to “meets expectations” and the rest to “below expectations.”
What are the four non comparative evaluation methods?
1) Rating Scale: Rates employees on a scale for various traits or behaviours e.g. on a scale of 1 to 5. Advantages include that it allows quick comparisons. Challenges is that it’s subjective and prone to rater bais. Example: A manager rates teamwork as a 4/5.
2) BARS: Combines qualitative and quantitative methods, giving clear behavioural descriptions for each scale points. Reduces subjectivity by tying ratings to observable behaviours. Advantages is that it’s consistent and provides specific feedback for improvement. Challenges is that it’s time intensive and requires a lot of manager time. An example is a customer service representative
3) Tests and Observations: Supervisors or evaluators monitor employees as they performa tasks in real or simulated environments. Advantages is that it’s objective and directly tied to job-related competencies. It’s useful for identifying skill gaps and areas requiring training. Challenges is that it can be costly and time consuming. It doesn’t always capture aspects of performance like attittude or teamwork. For instance, a mechanic is tested on diagnosing and repairing a vehicle within a specific time frame.
4) Management by Objectives: Employees and managers jointly set goals often following the SMART criteria(Specific, Measurable, Acheivable, Relevant, Time-bound). Advantages include that it promotes employee engagement and aligns employee goals with the organization. The challenges are that it requires consistend follow up and monitoring to ensure goals are met. For example, a sales representative sets a goal with their manager to increase monthly sales by 20% within six months.
What are the 5 sources or people we can go to when looking for performance ratings?
1) Peers
2) Customers/Clients
3) Self-Appraisals
4) Supervisors
5) Direct Reports
What is rater training?
Raters are trained on the purpose of the performance appraisal process, its alignment with the organization’s strategy, and the forms themselves.
What are the 6 forms of rater error training?
1) Halo effect
2) Error of central tendency
3) Leniency and strictness
4) Personal prejudice
5) Recency effect
6) Contrast errors
What is the Halo Effect?
Definition: Overgeneralizing positive performance in one area to unrelated areas.
Example: Rating an employee highly on all criteria because of their excellent interpersonal skills.
Impact: Leads to inflated ratings and obscures improvement areas.
