The Appraising System of the Mater Hospital - Essay Example

MINI CASE This paper analyses the current appraising system of the Mater Hospital focusing on the main issues relative to human resource management. The Donald Kirkpatrick learning and training evaluation theory forms the foundation for the arguments and probable solutions. Typically, the concept in his module supports the general analysis. Moreover, the concepts and modules of Donald’s theory apply in the formulation of the best options and developments that counter the issues experienced by James Ralph as the vice president of administrators in the Mater Hospital. Common issues such as linkages between appraisals and increases in salary act as key determinants of the best system for the hospital relative to its overall goals and objectives as a healthcare institution. As part of the conclusion, the Mater Hospital administrators lack the required organization to ensure sustainability of such a medical institution as depicted by the current appraisal system. Assertively, the appraisal systems are equally significant as the reward and retention systems that appear to carry more weight in human resource management and it would be interesting to learn how organizations can link these systems for advanced efficiency. Contents Introduction 2 The Case Study: Evaluating Employees at Mater Hospital 3 Theoretical Analysis 4 Problem Statement/ Issue and Literature Support 6 Alternative/Solution Strategy 7 Professional Advice and Graphic Ranking Forms’ Improvements 7 Best Performance Appraisal System for the Mater Hospital 9 Conclusion 9 References 10 Introduction Accordingly, concrete talent management programs form the foundation for talent attraction and retention; however, most corporations overlook the fact that the leadership and management are the core overseers of talent, but through the set programs. Relatively, the control of talent and retaining employees is essential to the development and triumph of any corporation; moreover, the talent initiatives should go hand in hand with engagement, evaluation and reward strategies, as part of organizational cultures (Allen 2010). However, most of the discussions under human resources aspects focus on attraction, reward and retention with only a few giving sub-standard attention to appraisal and evaluation systems that are equally significant. Assertively, the aim of the case analysis on Mater Hospital is identifying the application of the appraisal systems and the depth at which they influence a certain organization. The foundation of the discussion is the bungling appraisal system in the hospital, with the analysis focusing on Donald Kirkpatrick’s Learning and Training Evaluation theory. The Mater Hospital has multiple staff members from healthcare professionals, caregivers and support employees under administrators and supervisors that ensure quality and compassion in all areas. As per the hospitals values and mission statement, therapeutic, medical and surgical services offered by employees in the hospital should be of highest level to ensure safety, wellbeing and recovery. As a way of ensuring high performance and quality, the administrators in the various departments use the appraisal system in place to evaluate the employees. The Case Study: Evaluating Employees at Mater Hospital As part of the developments in the hospital’s personnel department in 2014, the top-level management team appointed new officials. James Ralph, the newly appointed vice president for administrative affairs at Mater Hospital, faced a tough problem shortly after his university career began. One month after his appointment in August, Mater’s Chief Executive Officer, Ralph’s boss, told him that improving the appraisal system was among his first core tasks. Naturally, the appraisal system applied in the evaluation of employees in different departments to assess their overall performance at the Mater Hospital. The biggest barricade related to the hospital’s appraisal system was that most of its practices were customary i.e. there was a direct link between the appraisal performance and the salary. This created additional problems for administrators who were less than accurate when using the graphic rating forms, which were the foundation for the employee evaluation. Typically, most of the administrators would rank every employee as excellent, which definitely attracted a lot of skepticism about the general evaluation process. Consequentially, the appraising process would facilitate a maximum salary increase for all employees annually. On the other, the current hospital budget lacked the necessary financial summary to facilitate another maximum increase of the salary for every employee. Additionally, Mater’s Chief Executive Officer was against the tradition of giving unsound response to employees on their performance because it was unproductive. As a result, the CEO asked Ralph, the new vice president to review the hospital’s system. Among his first actions, Ralph sent a memo to all administrators, telling them that in the future no more than half the employees reporting to any particular administrator could have excellent as their final appraisal. The administrators would now put more effort on supervision and rank every employee relative to their quality performance. Most of the administrators criticized Ralph’s memo on the claim that the move would lead to employee turnover; moreover, the employees were also against the idea because it lowered their chances of the annual maximum salary increase. The different events following Ralph’s action made him question his decision hence considering the requisition of expert advice from performance appraisal professionals who were his schoolmates. After several consultations, Ralph found out that the appraisal system was more than a decade old and selected employees in the hospital formed the original development team. Moreover, the appraisal system faced multiple problems immediately after its development but the administrators used it anyway as the chief evaluation tool for the employees. Theoretical Analysis Significantly, evaluation of an organization gives a lot of useful information concerning the performance and other aspects that affect it. However, the assessment is only efficient if there are separate evaluations of organizations plans and strategies; naturally, the evaluation systems focus on the organization primarily but dividing it into different units gives more results. The idea behind evaluation and measurement is coming up with a system that familiarizes, subsists, executes and empowers, but most organizations have a hard time implementing the best strategy for the culture and other variations (Wendy, 2009). Assertively, the diagnostic model below is the best evaluation system for the talent retention, appraisal and reward system proposals; essentially, the process revolves around collecting data on performance, classifying the different factors (good and bad) and coming up with better performance strategies. The Donald Kirkpatrick learning and training evaluation model’s last review was in 1994 and the four levels put out would work best for the assessment of different units (Michelle 2011). The levels are: Reaction- The first part of the evaluation and measurement will base on assessing how the management team reacts to the proposed plans in form of reviews, discussions and personal theories. The reaction aspect is significant being the only way of establishing whether the proposals meet the management’s objectives, fits the organization’s culture and parts left out; moreover, it creates an insight for any improvements or additions. Learning- The second level involves assessing the knowledge of the management and the employees after implementing the proposal. An increase is the result that most people look for in this step; moreover, the knowledge has to go hand-in-hand with the objectives of the organization in that particular topic (Chapman 2014). Meeting some of these objectives guarantees that the strategy is effective as marked by the alterations and developments on awareness, abilities and assertiveness; moreover, a critical assessment also improves the approach of the challenge in the future. Behaviour- This level involves the identification of any behaviour changes under the basis of the new implementations. The question is how the proposed strategies are affecting the behaviour of the employees and the managers. Changes might mean that they were either effectual or a complete failure. If they are no changes, it means that either the management has challenges or the employees are not in on the implementation. Results- This level does not entail a lot of activity as it involves combining the information gathered from other levels, analysing it critically and seeing if the whole process was of any effect, relative to the organization’s comprehensive objectives (Wendy 2009). Problem Statement/ Issue and Literature Support Definitely, the Mater Hospital’s appraising system is insufficient, a factor that the experts would be quick to point out to Ralph. Moreover, after establishing that the appraisal system determined employees’ salary increases, every staff member supports it hence the management team lacks the obligation of altering it. The human resources department sees the system as a solution for the employee salary issue because the administrators rank most of the employees excellent as a reduction strategy for the turnover. However, this is a critical problem because the system affects other practices of the organization. As per the theory, Ralph needs to review the overall system relative to Mater Hospital’s goals and objectives and seeking assistance from the experts could simplify this process. On the other hand, the ranking rubric that mostly involves ‘excellent’ lacks a clear elaboration. Ralph also needs to withdraw the initial memo because it depicts a forceful and unorthodox way to address the administrators. Generally, almost all modules of the appraising system contribute to the overall problems and the management could consider replacing the unfair procedures and practices resulting from the current appraisal system that does not tie the evaluation process to the increase in salaries (Michelle, 2011). Among other prevalent issues is the graphic ranking form’s efficiency as compared to the ranking approach proposed by Ralph. Moreover, breaking the link between the increase in salary and the appraising system requires alterations in other practices of the hospital that can facilitate or determine the increases. Alternative/Solution Strategy Professional Advice and Graphic Ranking Forms’ Improvements Any performance appraisal is essential to everyone in the organization since it is a well-established talent management practice; however, for most organizations, it is a mere practice to facilitate the increase of salary for employees. Additionally, most of the managers are not keen on the evaluation of their employees through the appraisals because they perceive them as a waste of time and a barrier for good relationships between them and the employees (Rojas, 2014). The current Mater Hospital’s appraisal system is not as effectual as any appraisal ought to be, simply because the administrators are favoring almost every employee by evaluating everyone as excellent. As a result, the Hospital is having a hard time managing the maximum salary increases every year everyone; however, the management deems the best way to counter this is excluding sufficient funds for the raise (Lawler, 1993). Decisively, the expert consultation and recommendations will have a definite impact through the proposed appraisal system because the administrators are required to pay more attention when evaluating their staff members. Moreover, through the vice president, the employee performance evaluation will be more productive and entail fairness to all the staff members. Nonetheless, the proposed way of conducting the appraisal does not fully exploit the abilities of any appraisal, normally because the salary-increase aspect is still the core factor. Moreover, it will definitely increase a certain level of accuracy but there are limitations as the administrators will just examine a few things of the staff acting as the disqualifying factors. Resolutely, the feedback is not be fully valid especially because the Hospital is using the graphic rate forms and the administrators are required to rank the staff by protocol (or force). The graphic rating forms are essential to the Mater Hospital since they are easy to fill and take less time to develop, the administrators compare the staff quantitatively, and the forms do not give the administrators a hard time during the evaluation or when developing them. Additionally, the graphic rating forms require improvement, as they are popular practice of fairness to the staff, simply because the evaluation follows the same criteria for all of them; moreover, most people agree that it is most valued and permissible while others question its development and validity that need clear guidelines (Allen, 2010). Despite the much compensation, Ralph should consider having secondary tools as part of the appraisal system because as much as the rating forms have advantages, there are demerits that bring more concern especially on the performance factor. Some of the administrators might be too authoritarian and others too compassionate in the evaluation making it hard to out-rightly figure out their personal and professional agendas; essentially, the only way to avoid this is the administrators and the staff negotiating on the factors to be included and excluded in the evaluation (Chapman, 2014). Definitely, this is hard to achieve because there is no absolute way of implementing to achieve this, especially for every employee hence the urge for the secondary appraisal tools. In addition, the way that the administrators perceive their staff is very dissimilar hence creating a variation in the ratings i.e. what may seem to impress a certain administrator might not sway another. This challenge results from the lack of an utter and fixed way to rank the staff; for instance, an employee might be weak in some areas and very strong in others creating a balance in the overall score, and another might have a balance in all the areas and end up with a very low score. Generally, the only way to ensuring that the appraisal is productive, fair and effectual is incorporating other ranking methods such as straight and alternative ranking; largely, this ensures a comprehensive way of establishing the level of performance for every staff member. Best Performance Appraisal System for the Mater Hospital Assertively, the best system for Ralph entails the Management by Objectives and Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale modules that will facilitate the strengthening of the relationship between the staff and employees, and making the staff more reliable in the appraisal. In Management by Objectives, the staffs’ goals are the basis of the entire appraisal and reviewing them during the final evaluation gives the administrators easier work, eliminating unfairness and biasness (Lipman, 2014). The key aspect in this method is the communication between the administrator and the staff members; moreover, this mode improves the creativity and level of thinking for the staff. However, the administrators need to ensure that the staff set strong goals for the method to be effectual since through this their performance levels will increase to reach their aim. The behaviorally anchored rating scale is also essential since on top of evaluating the performance it also evaluates the interactive aspects of the appraisal through utilizing description data required to reach certain job limits and complete assignments. Conclusion The Mater Hospital administrators lack the required organization to ensure sustainability of such a medical institution as depicted by the current appraisal system. However, through following the levels in Donald Kirkpatrick’s model alterations or even the development of a new appraisal system can influence the employees’ performance positively. In fact, assessment of such a system influences the understanding between employees, turnover rates, retention and nurturing talents. Under relentless turnover, a standard appraising system affects the performance, self-esteem and general sustainability of an organization, from the employees to the top-level management (Lawler, 1993). Resolutely, appraisal systems are equally significant as the reward and retention systems that appear to carry more weight in human resource management and it would be interesting to learn how organizations can link these systems for advanced effectiveness. References Allen, D. (2010). Employee Evaluation- Investing in the Future of HR’: SHRM Foundations, Retrieved 20 March 2015, http://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/research/documents/retaining%20talent-%20final.pdf Chapman, A. (2014) Kirkpatrick’s Learning and Training Evaluation Theory’: Human Resources, Business Balls, Retrieved 20 March 2015, http://www.businessballs.com/kirkpatricklearningevaluationmodel.htm Lawler, E. (1993) Effective Appraisal Systems’: Centre of Effective Organizations, Retrieved 20 March 2015, http://ceo.usc.edu/pdf/G935225.pdf Lipman, V. (2014) How Companies Can Better Engage Critical Skill Talent’: Talent Management, Forbes, Retrieved 20 March 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2014/03/28/study-explores-how-companies-can-better-engage-critical-skill-talent/ Michelle, J (2011) Kirkpatrick’s Four-Level Training Evaluation Model’: Mind Tools, Retrieved 20 March 2015, http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/kirkpatrick.htm Rojas, K. (2014). Evaluating the Performance of an Organization’: Better Evaluation, Retrieved 20 March 2015, http://betterevaluation.org/theme/organizational_performance Wendy, K. (2009) The Kirkpatrick Model’: Kirkpatrick Partners, Retrieved 20 March 2015, http://www.kirkpatrickpartners.com/OurPhilosophy/TheKirkpatrickModel/tabid/302/Default.aspx Read More