Designing Effective Performance Appraisal Systems - Assignment Example

1. Describe the organizational situations that support each of the three types of system-wide process interventions the organization confrontation meeting, (2) the intergroup relations intervention, and (3) the large group intervention.  Ans: The organization confrontational meeting was pioneered by Richard Beckhard. It’s a meeting of one day of the management group who discusses about the problems of the organization and causes behind it, develops plans to rectify the problem and sets a schedule for completing the action plans. It’s a quick simple and reliable method of generating data about organization. Such meeting is appropriate for such situations when: a) there is very limited time for an activity b) there is a need for top management to analyze its own working and they wish to improve the conditions of organization quickly c) there is good cohesion in the management team to ensure follow up procedure and commitment to carry out the required changes d) the organization has underwent some major changes recently. The steps in the confrontational meeting consist of scheduling the meeting, creating groups and setting ground rules, identification of the problem and listing it for sharing it, forming problem solving groups, developing the action plan after setting priorities of the problem and providing report on the outcome via follow up team.(French, 2008) The intergroup relation can affect the way an organization performs. So resolution of intergroup conflict demands attention. The intervention is required because intergroup conflicts can have serious effects on organization process. Two major interventions are intervention from microcosm groups and intergroup team building intervention. The Microcosm group identifies an issue, give training to the group on how to solve the conflict by addressing it and then dissolve the group. Inter group team building operation develop activities to increase communication between the groups.(Cummings and Worley, 2014, pp. 276-280). One such activity is that of Blake, Shepard and Mouton which is applied in situations when the relation between two groups is extremely hostile. In this activity the leaders of the groups meet with a consultant and confirmation are taken from them whether they want better relation between the groups. Then as intervention the groups are asked to build lists regarding their dislikes of the other group and the other group is asked to anticipate what the first group thinks about them. Then the two groups share the information between them and this is how they discover that the conflicts are fewer between than they have perceived and that many disagreement area between them actually evolved due to miscommunication.(French, 2008, pp.133-135). Large Group Interventions (LGI)help people to think by collaborating and acting from a perspective of whole system of the organization, internally through processes in the organization and externally through its relation to customers and shareholders. It encourages simultaneous participation of many individuals associated with the organization. They are much faster than other methods and take two to three days of time. LGI is needed in turbulent situations in the organization. Methods included in the LGI are Future search mode, the search conference, whole scale change and open space model. The search conference is associated with shared learning where the objective is to find the common ground for commitment to achieve a good future of the system. The future search model drives the whole system towards a shared vision. In the whole scale methodology planning, cultural change are done to create a unified organization.The open space model rests on the situation when the human involved have inbuilt capacity to make their own future and get things done. (Arena, 2009). 2.What is the TQM approach to EI and how does it differ from other approaches? Discuss Demingas influence on this approach. Ans: Total Quality Management (TQM) has originated from the quality control of manufacturing firms and it represents a long term effort to arrange all organizational activity around the concept of quality. Implementation of TQM through employee involvement would lead to results being sustained for a longer time. TQM leads to increased knowledge of the employees through training, in building in them the decision making capability and give relevant information to them. TQM is a much more comprehensive approach than parallel structures. Parallel structures involve employees to solve complex problems and adapting themselves to organizations (Cummings and Worley, 2014, pp354-56). It involves off site meeting in which the employee discusses on how to improve their quality of work. Parallel structures provide employee time to do problem solving of organization and act in new ways.TQM is an approach which aims at gaining customer satisfaction by providing quality products. Modification of TQM has produced Six Sigma. Six Sigma is based on five principles DMAIC (Define, measure, analyze, improve and control). Companies following Six Sigma approach have two teams- green belt team and black belt team. The green belt team is trained over one to two weeks period on the fields of project management, problem solving and data analysis. While the black belt team is trained over a period of five weeks’ time on fields like statistical tools and technologies. This approach demands employee involvement at each level.(Gul, 2012, pp.19-20). Dr. W. Edwards Deming was the founder of the quality management. He advised the Japanese business to focus on quality products which donot fail and this helped Japan in emerging as industrial power. Japans dominance on consumer goods market was a result of their focus on product quality. Later on America also adopted Deming’s philosophy. Deming asked companies to focus on product reliability which can be achieved through worker management coordination and statistical analysis. Deming’s management strategies were based on the principle of PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) and the 14 points on management. The style of management rested on the theory of knowledge which built a cooperative relation between manager and workers. Deming’s approach focuses on customer satisfaction and believed that customer demands quality. He encouraged companies to involve workers in their decision making process. Some of his 14 points were to create a constancy of purpose, ending the practice of buying at low prices, eliminating numerical quotas, empty slogans, breaking down the barriers between departments, improving the process of production etc. His 14 points would encourage the managers to achieve success by focusing on production of superior quality products and satisfying the customer.(Phu, 2011, pp.12-15) 3. What can be done to improve performance appraisal systems?  Ans: Performance Appraisal is a continuous process of gauging an employee performance. It is a review of employee’s performance over a period of time and so it is a part of performance management. The performance appraisal process consist of steps like job analysis where it is important to know the nature of job of an employee to evaluate his performance, developing standards and measurement methods to measure performance, informal performance appraisal system which looks beyond a yearly formal interview for appraisal and consists of regular feedback on performance of the employee and final is the preparation for formal interview for appraisal.(Lussier and Hendon, 2013, pp.285-87). The reason for carrying out performance appraisal is to give an opportunity to the employee to interact with the management regarding the performance of employee and that employee can speak to the management regarding the factors which is restricting his ability to perform successfully. Based on this communication information is gathered to make decisions on pay rise, promotions and demotions, necessity for training and development etc. This decision making enhances productivity of the firm. Performance appraisal provides motivation to employees and thus their willingness to reach organizational goals rises.Newer approaches of performance appraisal system focus on increasing the frequency of feedback. In 1997, 78% of appraisal was yearly, but in 2003 over 40% of companies surveyed conducted appraisal process twice a year. It might not be practical to increase the formal feedback frequency but informal feedback can increase which will help an employee to assess his performance.Capital One, one of the largest financial companies in USA had the 360 degree feedback during appraisal system. Performance management system change came in 2000 when they set up a design team for performance management. The design team recommended shifting of 7 point rating scale which was confusing to 5 point rating scale where low score meant action and development was required while high score meant string performance. In 2003 it introduced that bonus compensation will be tied to current performance results of employees and their capability of learning new competencies. This is how Capital one performance appraisal system has evolved over time. (Cummings and Worley, 2014, pp.426-434). An important aspect for improving appraisal system is training for those who are raters. Training must be given to senior and junior managers of an organization to focus on the process of management, motivating and evaluating performance of employee. Training should include supervision skills development, resolution of conflicts, coaching and counseling, setting up performance standards etc. Raters who underwent such training will undergo evaluation process on how they conduct performance appraisals. This train process will determine that evaluations are performed in a consistent manner in whole organization. Training is also required for employees on how they set objectives and how they communicate etc. Another aspect is frequency of appraisal. Conducting appraisal process frequently will eliminate a selective memory of an employee by the supervisor and shocks or surprises at annual review. This also will help an employee and his supervisor in understanding the performance problem before any final annual review. Another aspect for an effective appraisal system is to keep an accurate record of employee’s performance. This helps to avoid selective memory problem of supervisor and thereby helps in taking appropriate action. A proper measurement system is needed to be devised. Ranking employees on numerical rating leads to average performers built up. A clear picture should be given to employee regarding the levels of performance. A multiple rater system should be taken into account for conducting performance appraisal. This will not allow only one supervisor to assess his subordinate. (Boice and Kleiner, 1997). 4. Compare and contrast leadership development interventions with career development interventions. In what areas and activities might they overlap? Ans: Management and leadership development interventions can be differentiated from career development intervention in the sense that for former the focus is laid on improving skills and knowledge which will be required for future strategies and management of business. While in career development the focus is on developing skills which will help an individual in his career building. The leadership development assessment requires assessment of executives and other individuals by interviewing them. This is done to identify the leadership skills in them and then program is developed to train prospective leaders although it has been criticized on the ground that good leaders develop from experience and not training. Second, development of design of the training program is required and in third step this training program is implemented and then evaluation is done. In career development intervention, four career stages are defined for making career planning effective. It involves diagnosing the persons existing career status – its establishment, advancement of career, maintenance of it and finally withdrawing. Career planning programs include communication over career opportunities through social networks and groups, workshops to guide employees on career development, counseling by mangers and HR’s . Career development intervention is applied on younger employees who are able to give more time to organization. (Cummings and Worley, 2014, pp.453). There is a need to invest in development of managers and leaders due to increasing challenges an economy faces. Leadership qualities can be attained by experience and reflection.(Gold, Thorpe and Mumford, 2010). Leadership development also requires that a manager should adapt himself to continuously changing organization. The manager should be able to provide employees with clear picture of their responsibility and priority, should be able to experiment with future. Leadership from managers should be able to create an environment for people in which they can accept the change in organization. Leaders should drive the employees with a vision and form expectations that organization will succeed due to change. This will help the employees to develop a greater commitment towards change process and engage them in constructive behaviors to implement the change. (Cummings and Worley, 2014, pp.165-166). Leonard and Goff in their study have found out that leadership development programs actually have positive impact on working of organization. The traditional models focus on individual development. Internal leadership development program can lead to improvements in functioning of organization. (Leonard and Goff, 2003). 5. Discuss methods to diagnose employee stress and the specific OD interventions aimed at alleviating it in the workplace. Ans: An organization should know whether its employee is vulnerable to stress. So stress diagnosis is required so that awareness can be raised about its causes and for helping those who suffer from it. The American Stress Institute gave estimation that annually job stress costs $300 billion to US business in form of increased rate of absenteeism, lower employee turnover, fall in work productivity, rise in insurance expenses and compensation payment. Stress is a difficult concept to measure and the challenges to it are measurement is moment specific, there is question on validity of stress measurements and since most questionnaires are self-reported so the question of authentic reply comes. Stress and wellness intervention requires a) diagnosing stress b) alleviating and coping with stress.There are several work place stressors like physical environment like light, noise, pollution in workplace, individual situation like role conflict and ambiguity, extreme workload, peer pressure, poor relation with boss etc. This led to lower self-esteem and dissatisfaction with job and reduces an employee’s involvement in workplace activities (Cummings and Worley, 2014, pp481-82). There are many ways in which stress can be diagnosed. Some of them are stress audits, stress risk assessments, focus groups, one to one interviews, maintaining stress logs to record critical moments, data from absence records, rates of accident, employee turnover, no of people taking advantage of counseling activities.(Stoic and Buicu, 2010). Audits and questionnaires lead to extensive data collection from people and the other measures helps in monitoring the stress level. Advantages of stress audits are that it helps in capturing clarity of stress hot spots within the organization and comparing the one with others, identification of primary causes of stress, establishing the fact that organization is seriously dealing with stress problem. The purpose of stress risk assessment is to diagnose whether the employee will develop stress related illness or not. There are five steps in this assessment which are identifying the hazards, deciding on who might be affected by it, evaluating it by what actions are needed to be taken, recording the findings of it and finally monitoring and reviewing it.(Cranwell and Abbey, 2005). The organization can control the stress by following means like by defining jobs in which it can grant autonomy to workers to carry out the task by themselves, by setting achievable targets without burdening an employee, by burden sharing through proper framing of people in position as per their capacities, by giving promotion based on professional skills, by providing advice and creating an environment so that the employee is able to share his or her problem, by giving training to management regarding how they can counsel and teaching them proper method of performance analysis. Role clarification helps an employee to understand the demands of his work role and this is a systematic process.Building supportive relationship involves establishment of trusted and genuine relationship between employee, bosses, subordinate and peer. This helps in coping with stress. Work leaves including paid leaves like vacation, personal days, paternity and maternity leaves and unpaid leaves are demanding attention from organization to reduce stress among employees. Employee assistance program is final way of stress and well ness intervention in which direct assistance is given to employee to identify and rectifying their personal problems, which varies from emotional problem, family problem, financial problem to combating alcoholism.Alcohol and drug use costs US business $102 billion per year in form of loss in productivity, accidents.(Cummings and Worley, 2014, p.481-486). Deaconu, Podgoreanu and Raşca say that there are primary, secondary and tertiary strategies in dealing with stress. Primary strategies are costly as they include arranging workspaces in such a way that it reduces stress like tidiness in office, decorative plants, comfortable chairs etc. Secondary strategies include provision of gyms and diet facilities to employees to reduce stress. Tertiary strategies include anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol programs to reduce stress.(Cummings and Worley, 2014, p.479). References Arena, M.J.(2009) Understanding Large Group Intervention Processes: A complexity theory perspective. Organizational Development Journal, 27(1),pp 50-52 Boice, D.F. and. Kleiner, B.H. (1997), Designing effective performance appraisal systems by. Work Study. 46 (6). pp 197–201 Cummings, T.G& Worley, C.G.(2014), Organizational Development & Change, Cengage Brain Cranwell, J.W. and Abbey ,A.(2005).Organizational Stress.PALGRAVE MACMILLAN French, W.L.& Bell, C.H. , Vohra, V.(2008).Organization Development: Behavioral Science Interventions for Organization Improvement. Pearson Education. Inc Gul. A et al. (2012), Improving Employees Performance Through Total Quality Management. 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