Global Travel Group

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Now we have a basic idea about what is performance management process, what is performance appraisal and what are the common errors that can happen is an ineffective performance evaluation.

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QUESTION 01:

Explain the weaknesses/ rater errors that you identified in this case.

In the given case study Rebecca has dome not only one or two, but almost all the rating errors that can be found in an performance appraisal.

Recency error

- Marketing executive Shehan had an argument with Rebecca recently. Therefore she marked his performance for cooperation, dedication and loyalty as “Marginal”.

There I have identified the recency error as the appraisal is based on Shehan’s recent behavior without considering the Shehan’s work records through the entire appraisal period.

As an appraiser we have to rate for the entire time period. Remembering the closest incident that happen and upon that memory rating the individual is not professional and that is not what we accept from the process.

Leniency error.

In this performance rating error appraiser tends to give employees unusually high ratings whether they meet the expected performance level in reality or not.

- As Sarath had many family problems, his performances were gone down significantly. By considering all these matters about Sarath, Rebecca marked his performance as “superior “even after she identified Sarath had not met with

- She marked every employee as “outstanding” for the sales volume because the performance of the marketing team was generally good. Here the Rebecca, with the intention of avoiding conflict, play it safe, she rated every employees in the high of the rating scale for the sales volume.

Personal bias

- Jenifer was one of the closest friends of Rebecca who studies with her when they were in India. Rebecca mark Jenifer’s performance as “outstanding” even though she had joined with the organization only 3 months before. This is clearly personal bias again because both Rebecca and Jennifer is from the same university and due to that Rebecca may unwittingly have a more favorable impression towards Jenifer.

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QUESTION 02:

If you are the head of the Human Resource in the above company, how do you guide Rebecca to carry out an effective appraisal process for her team to measure the individual contribution and reward accordingly?

Provide training:

A weakness of many performance appraisal programs is that appeasers are not sufficiently train for the appraisal task and therefore the feedback they provide are not useful as they are affected with rating errors or some other errors. Therefore training appraisers are very important.

In this Rebecca’s case it’s quite clear she doesn’t had a basic idea of performance appraisals method. She thinks that performance appraisals are should do by HR only. She doesn’t understand that conducting the appraisal is a responsibility of the line manager.

Therefore first of all Rebecca have to have a proper training on objectives of having PMS and appraisals.

Facilitate with needful HR:

According to the case details, Rebecca is the head of marketing. She is reporting to the Director marketing. Though Rebecca is the head of marketing, still she had to do all the administrative work by herself. Performance appraisals, sales objectives and etc…

So, my assumption is Rebecca is having a lack of executive staff to delegate her responsibilities so she can concentrate on her prioritize work such as performance appraisals.

If there’s such a problem, as the head of HR I’m proposing to give 02 sales executive to Rebecca or appoint HR assistance in to Rebecca’s department so he can assist Rebecca on HR activities and by that way Rebecca can have a light training about how to conduct an appraisal meeting and she will be relief by her heavy work load.

Establish individual goals and objectives:

At the beginning or before the appraisal period managers need to set the clear, achievable objectives and goals for each individual. Then the managers can continuously review the performance of their subordinates comparing with the settled objectives.

Setting goals for individuals is function as a major step in an organization’s performance management process. This can be typically done by discussing the goals and targets together with supervisor and the subordinate. Then the supervisor and the subordinate can meet to appraise the subordinate’s performance in relation to the previously established goals. The targets and goals should be achievable and measurable.

Maintain the routinely document or critical incident diary:

Having a routinely document or critical incident diary for employee’s accomplishments and failures throughout the whole appraisal period will help to minimize the recency and leniency errors.

Appraiser should review the performance based on the documentation collected throughout the year and even after the appraisal form is completed it is better that set it aside for a few days and then review it again.

360° Reviews:

Sometimes the best way to get an accurate look at an employee’s performance is to get the evaluation from several parties and then use the results to measure overall performance. 360 degree multi-rater reviews are a great way to reduce personal bias and favourations.

The appraisal should not only base with the subjective criteria:

Here in the case study Rebecca has not set the specific individual sales volumes and objectives. Therefore she was not able to done her evaluation based on objective criteria. But evaluating based on objective criteria is very important for appraisal as well as subjective.

Identifying the subjective values of the employees are important when they are about to be promoted and objective values for the increments and incentives. So in performance appraisals evaluations