Engineering Management - Assignment Example

ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT II Exercise: 120 Ans1. There could be two outcomes of Steve’s ratings of Virginia. The employee in question could either, as Steve hopes, take an incentive and strive to work better in order to improve her performance or the other outcome could be that Virginia becomes complacent about her work knowing that she can get away with sub-standard work and still get average to above average ratings, as long as Steve was her manager. Finally, it could also encourage her to be more careless, consequently lowering her standard of work still further. Ans2. Yes, in one way or another, his approach to Virginia’s ratings will most probably affect the ratings he assigns to other members of his staff. He will either be lenient towards all others out of guilt (as well as to avoid confrontations that might arise due to differences of opinion with those he reviews) or more strict with others to cover for Virginia’s incompetence. After all, the way he rated Virginia’s performance, makes it clear that his first priority is to avoid confrontation and the extra time and effort required to justify his below average rating, for which he would need to go through the records he had been able to collect. On the other hand, he might try to compensate his erroneous rating of Virginia’s performance by being overly harsh in his rating of other employees; especially the ones he thinks will take his ratings and comments without the ensuing emotional outburst that he is desperate to avoid, even at the cost of introducing stagnation of effort in the organization. Ans3. The most crucial mistake that Steve made in rating Virginia’s performance was the lack of around the year monitoring and frank discussions with Virginia about her performance level. Next, he compounded his mistake by letting his emotions and fear of facing a tough situation, get in the way of a truthful and fair evaluation that would have been of benefit to both, the organization and the job holder in the long run. Instead, Steve should have approached the appraisal process with total honesty and strength. Moreover, he should have had the wisdom to have open discussions with Virginia prior to the actual appraisal and encouraged her to recognize her shortcomings in order to improve herself. In this way he could have guided her throughout the year to make improvements in areas where she lagged, to contribute actual value to the organization. Ans4. The performance review conducted by Steve was biased and incorrect owing to his lack of proper effort and feelings about the employee. Consequently, this appraisal would have a negative impact on the employees and the performance of the company. He gave her higher ratings than she deserved in order to save himself from a difficult situation that demanded more effort than he was prepared to make. He proved himself to be an incapable supervisor as who lacked the grit to be honest with employees when faced with problems. This could prove to be devastating for the organization in the long run. It could give the wrong signal to other employees, demonstrating that they too could get away with substandard work, which could cause serious damage to the overall goals of the business. His attitude towards incompetent workers poses a threat to the growth and survival of the company by promoting poor quality output. Generous as he is being, one has to keep in mind that a business is setup with a profit motive. In order to survive in the market it is imperative for a company to have skilled employees, who do their utmost to achieve the objectives of the firm. Ans5. ‘There should be no surprises from the appraisal process.’ When a person is responsible for reviewing workers performance, he should not just be aware of this statement, but also understand the reason and logic behind it. A genuine appraisal process is a two way street. It allows the company to; weed out non-performers, recognize potential and reward performers; while motivating the workers to be self-analytical and improve their capability to progress both inside and outside the company. In order to achieve this both parties should be aware of what is expected of them, towards this end feedback should be provided to the worker from time to time, to let them know if their performance is satisfactory or not, and in which areas they need to improve themselves to overcome their shortcomings. To apply this statement in his next review, Steve should review the performance of his workers on a continuous basis and not just once a year at the formal review. Moreover he should have open, informal discussions with the workers about their performance throughout the year and let them know where and what they need to do to meet the organization’s standard of work expected of them. If he does this, instead of covering up for his workers incompetence, he would be able to help them to improve while avoiding emotional recriminations from them, if they do not take note of his feedback seriously. Exercise: 143 Notes for discussion at the board of directors meeting in 2 weeks time: It is high time that we deal with the issue of an ungrateful workforce that is impossible to satisfy. Remedial actions that could be taken would be: 1. Instituting a ‘grievance procedure’ to ensure that employees concerns / dissatisfaction are duly noted by the management and efforts are made to resolve them. 2. Publish and distribute a booklet about the code of conduct and standards that all employees must conform to. 3. Issuance of informal and them formal warnings if the set code is not followed. 4. Institute a policy of taking disciplinary action to be taken against employees who do not conform to the code and standards specified. 5. Allow employees the right of appeal against any disciplinary action. 6. Allow employees to be represented by a trade union representative or colleague during any formal proceedings. 7. Implementing some degree of ‘harmonisation’ i.e. the adoption of a common approach and criteria to pay and conditions for all employees. 8. Do away with traditions like, giving present to staff getting married if they cause dissatisfaction among other staff members with different views. Or, honouring their opinions and giving them presents too. Read More