Your new boss for this scenario explains that s/he wants a report that does the following:
� Describes the current performance appraisal system for the position.
� Evaluates the extent to which the current performance appraisal system aligns with and contributes to
the organization’s performance management system.
� Explains and evaluates the process and methods used to conduct performance appraisals for this
position.
� Identifies and analyzes specific strengths and weaknesses in the performance appraisal system and
the implications for the organization’s performance management system.
� Describes and analyzes potential options for improvement.
� Proposes and defends one to three specific changes that should help the organization ensure it is an
employer of choice.
Introduction
Employees are the most vital asset in an organization. This is because employees are the
ones who do all the duties such as production, distribution, selling off the company products
among other important activities that help an organization to attain its long-term goals.
Therefore, performance management practice where managers, supervisors, and employees work
as a team to plan, monitor and review employee’s work performance with organization objective
and overall contribution to the organization is very valuable (Kondrasuk, 2012). Performance
Appraisal deals with the way companies evaluate and measures its employee’s behaviors and
achievements. That is an employee review by his or her supervisor where the employee’s work is
evaluated to identify his strengths and weaknesses. The company used the behavioral checklist
approach for performance appraisal of customer care executives in our organization. This is
where supervisors study and analyze the employee’s best and worst incidents of behavior in the
past year (Mone & London, 2014). I used secondary sources to research and get insights about
Performance Appraisal and performance management. After a careful analysis of my findings, I
saw that it is appropriate to integrate management by objectives (MBO) in our performance
appraisal and management system.
Case Context
As a customer care executive supervisor I am given the responsibility to supervise the
organization customer care staff as they communicate with clients to assist in providing
direction, and address inquiries about the organization products and services. Some of the key
responsibilities of a customer care executive include handling problems, assisting in sales, doing
clerical tasks, among other tasks. Therefore, my duty as a supervisor is to assist customer care
executives in doing their jobs and ensure that clients are satisfied with customer service.
Current Performance Appraisal and Performance Management systems
Appraisal system helps organizations to make decisions concerning pay, promotions, and
careers. The system also helps the management to identify the development needs of the
individual employee.
The management currently uses behavioral checklist for performance appraisal. This is
where supervisors study and analyze the employee’s best and worst incidents of behavior in the
past year (. This technique is effective when managing customer executive because customer
care communicates with employees and are bound to exhibit different behavior in handling
clients. Behavioral checklist system uses a combination of behaviors, attitudes and traits when
performing day to day operations. The company uses total performance management approach
where role profiles, individual objectives, targets, personal development plan and appraisal is
considered by balancing “Whats” and the “hows” of enactment. The management focuses on
how the commercial result is prerequisite and the ideal way to achieve that outcome. Total
performance management has a strong alignment with long-term goals.
Theoretical Framework
Performance management and performance appraisal
Employee engagement can be defined as the level of commitment to the employees made
by their employers, exhibited in their inclination to remain at the company, making the firm an
employer of choice or go beyond what is required of them. Companies often desire employees
who are highly motivated and feel that they are part of the firm’s accomplishment. Such workers
are keen to complete tasks in their own time and perceive a strong connection concerning the
company success and their career visions. In short, employees who are motivated and
empowered make the company an employer of choice and work together with the organization in
a setting of mutual trust. Employee engagement through strategic human resource management
involves performance management, performance appraisal and use of a system of rewards to
motivate and empower employees to yield even greater results at the organization.
Performance management refers to a goal-oriented practice which aims at guaranteeing
that managerial processes are put in place to take full advantage of the productivity of
employees, groups, teams and in the long-run, the company. Performance management is an
important role in accomplishing organization strategy in in such a way that it encompasses
evaluating and refining the value of the workforce. It is important to note that there is a positive
association linking motivations and performance. Therefore, Performance management
encompasses of incentive goals and the matching incentive value so as to establish a clear
relationship between the two and communicate them to the employees.
The process of performance management involves performance appraisal and human
resource development. Therefore, performance appraisal is part of performance management.
And can be defined as, a systematic process done periodically to assess an individual employee
performance and productivity at work about definite pre-set criteria and organization goals.
When doing performance appraisal other facets such as accomplishment, structural citizenship
behavior, strong point and flaws, and the prospective for future enhancement among others are
also well thought-out.
While performance is done periodically, performance management is a continuous,
dynamic, ongoing process. Each facet of the human resource systems such as employee training,
performance appraisal, and administering of rewards is integrated and linked for the aim of
improving organizational performance. Therefore, performance management helps to
concentrate the employee’s skills towards achieving the organization strategic goals. Training is
required to improve workers skills. Therefore, performance management system helps to align
organization training with organization goals.
Why do we need performance appraisal in our organization?
Performance appraisal system aims at improving individual and organization
performance. Therefore, a good performance appraisal system helps the organization t achieve
its long-term goals, objectives and enhance employee performance. Some of the key uses of
performance Appraisal include;
Human resource planning: information collected through performance appraisal assist the
management in human resource planning. The collected data help to identify employees who
have the potential for promotion among, internal employee relation and also form a basis for
determining the human resource strong points and flaws to capitalize on improvement.
Recruitment and selection of employee: information such as performance appraisal
ratings is important in forecasting the performance of job candidates. The data collected in
performance appraisal also provide data requisite for evaluating applicant responses during
interviews.
Training and development: Performance appraisal helps the human resource to determine
employee’s specific areas that require training and development.
Compensation programs: performance appraisal provides valuable data that management
uses in making decisions concerning pay adjustment. Most managers believe in rewarding
outstanding job performance by increasing employee’s pay. This help to motivate employees to
work towards achieving the organization objectives (Aguinis et al., 2011).
Performance Appraisal Process
The process of performance appraisal involves five distinct stages. Those are, pointing
out specific performance goals, introducing performance criteria and communicate them to
staffs, scrutinize work performed, appraise individual employee performance, and debating
appraisal with the employee (Rolstadas, 2012).
Therefore, in the first step, management identifies the specific performance goals, the
company believes this to be the most essential and realistically achievable. In our case, the
management should stress on customer care development to improve customer services. The
next step in the continuing cycle of performance appraisal carries on with instituting
performance principles or standards that the employees are supposed to achieve and
communicating these performance expectations to them (Wanjiku & Sakwa, 2013). After that,
the employees do their work based on the set standards, and the supervisor assesses the
performance. Finally, the supervisor and the employee come together to appraise and evaluate
each employee work performance based on the established performance standards (Story, 2014).
The review process is important as it helps in establishing how well the employee has met these
standards, find out the reason for short-comings, and come up with a strategy to correct the
problem. At these meeting, a set of new goals are fixed for the next assessment period, and the
performance appraisal phase repeats.
Application and analysis
The basis of the theory is to provide a framework for application in the real life situation.
Therefore, it is important to understand how performance management and performance
appraisal can be used in our organization to make the company an employer of choice and
achieve organizational success. Performance management is important in the customer care
department to help in the development of customer care executive, improvement of customer
services and thus build customer loyalty.
After careful analysis of the different approaches to performance appraisal, I noted that
behavioral checklist approach is not the best for performance appraisal of customer care
executives. This is because behavioral checklist approach focuses on traits of customer executive
when doing their day to day tasks and neglects the extent to which customer care executive help
in the overall attainment of organization goals. Be as it may, performance management aims at
improving overall performance and aligning employee performance with organizational goals.
The supervisor is expected to set customer service standards and goals. This is the first
component of operative performance administration. Individual customer care executive and
group customer service goals should be allied with the organizational long term goals. This is
important so as to enable the organization to set specific goals aimed at improving customer
service and achieving the organizational goals.
Secondly, the supervisory team is required to develop a measurement system. A
customer-focused performance management programs require measuring or quantifying of
customer needs. Therefore, the supervisor is required to determine the where to set standards and
goals. On the same note, provide a means of feedback to the employees and teams of their effort
to achieve their goals.
Result or outcome measures should be measured as it informs the management where
agencies, teams, and individuals working in the customer care department stand in their effort to
achieve organizational goals. Therefore, the supervisors should measure the number of customer
complaints, compliments, and the recommendation made by customers to other to point out
customer satisfaction.
Feedback is also a very important component of an effective and successful performance
management program. Therefore, the supervisor should seek feedback that is specific, timely,
and appropriate (Aguinis et al., 2012). Customer care supervisors can obtain feedback on
customer service goals from the organization customers, work measurement system,
subordinates, and team leaders among other sources. Feedback is important for frontline
managers and supervisors to make a decision concerning where needs improvement through
training and for rewarding performance.
A good performance management system should have a reward system to provide
incentives and reward good performance. By rewarding and recognizing customer services, the
employees will know that the management cares about customer service and promote
accomplishment of goals. Therefore, the organization should reward and recognize programs for
both teams and individual so as to support and promote the established goals. Therefore,
management should develop goal sharing, and gain sharing group incentives to promote goal
achievements. The management should also provide career and personal development form of
incentives such as additional training, high involvement in decision making among other
incentives.
Monetary incentives; monetary incentives help improve performance. Therefore, the
management should set achievable goals and use monetary incentives to promote goal
achievement. Monetary incentives often have a tendency of improving performance, increase
goal acceptance and commitment and on the same note, induce employees to set goals and
finally lead to the setting of higher goals (Aguinis et al., 2013).
Non-monetary recognition: employees also value non-monetary recognition of
outstanding performance aimed at achieving customer service goals and thus results in
improvement of performance. Examples of non-monetary incentives include giving certificates
of excellence, receiving congratulatory notes from superiors, and throwing a party to celebrate
exceptional performance.
This type of performance appraisal is relevant as it is able to provide feedback to enable
the supervisor identify if the goals of the organization are met or not. The performance appraisal
system is also correlated with the performance goals of the organization thus making the system
relevant. On the same note, the performance appraisal system is reliable and practically as it is
able to identify what is required to be improved and is easily applicable. Different people can
also get the same results when utilizing similar system to rate the same team or employees. The
appraisal system used is sensitive also as it is able to distinguish between effective and
ineffective employees or between failure and success.
Conclusions, Recommendations, and Reflections
Recommendations
First of all, I recommend the adoption of management by objective (MBO) method of
performance appraisal. In this approach the managers, supervisors and employees jointly set
objectives for the employees, after that, performance is evaluated periodically, and rewards are
accorded based on results. Management by Objectives focuses more on attainment of
organization goals because work is done based on the set objectives and rewards are accorded
when organization objectives are met. This method is among the best when it comes to
employee development. Information concerning critical incidence should be collected using the
behavioral checklist. However, employees should be given feedback continuously on how they’re
doing and their effort towards achieving organizational goals.
Secondly, I propose that employees should be rewarded for achieving the set goals and
consistent working towards organization goals. This can be identified by collecting feedback
from customers, subordinates, team leaders concerning the employee performance. An employee
who receives a lot of positive feedback and is always able to meet organization goals should be
rewarded so as to motivate him/her to continue performing betters. Poor performance should be
punished, and employees who are unable to meet their expectation should be informed that they
are free to look for a job elsewhere.
Reflections
Before being promoted to be a supervisor, I learned a lot working as a customer care
executive. One of the important skills required is good communication and interpersonal skills.
A customer care executive communicates with countless clients in a day. In some days, you may
find irrational or moody customers who may be upset with the company services. In such
situations, it is important for a customer care executive to keep calm and communicate
effectively in the right code of conduct. When it comes to achieving organization goals, the duty
of a customer care executive is demanding and requires dedication and good time management.
Now that I am the supervisor, I am in a better position to understand the job requirements and the
demands of those working under me as customer care executives.
Conclusion
Employee development through performance management, performance appraisal, and
training is important for an organization to achieve organizational success. Performance
appraisal is part of the performance management process where employee performance is
periodically assessed to identify areas that need improvement and to make decision concerning
pay rise and promotion. A good performance system is timely, reliable and accurate.
Therefore, the management should adopt the appropriate performance management
system with proper performance appraisal and good reward system that will be able to build and
motivate employees into being better people. In so doing the management will be an employer of
choice and the employer and employee will work together in mutual trust to achieve
organizational goals and thus organization success. The organization should adopt management
by objective approach system where performance is linked to organization objectives.
Employees can meet their goals should be rewarded. On the other hand, those who do not
perform should be trained, motivated and encouraged to perform better. This way the
management will be able to develop skilled employees who work towards achieving
organizational goals.
References
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performance management—And why we should love it. Business Horizons, 54(6), 503-
507.
Mone, E. M., & London, M. (2014). Employee engagement through effective performance
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De Waal, A. (2013). Strategic Performance Management: A managerial and behavioral
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Rolstadas, A. (Ed.). (2012). Performance management: A business process benchmarking
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