Performance Appraisal:
Performance appraisal is done to evaluate the performance of the
employees and also helps in the understanding the abilities of a person for the
further growth of the employees.
Performance appraisal is done
in systematic ways using following steps:
- Supervisor
measures the pay of the employees with the targets and plans for betterment of
the pay scale.
- Supervisor measures the key terms that are
responsible for the performance of the employees.
- Employers also guide the employees
regarding their performance that helps them in growth of their career.
Objectives of Performance
Appraisal:
· To maintain records of every employee in order
to decide their compensation packages.
· To identify the strengths and weakness of
the employee to place the correct person in correct job.
· To maintain, present and improve the
potential of a person which leads to their career growth.
· To evaluate the performance of the
individual employees periodically.
· It is a basis to influence the work habits
of an employee.
· It helps to review or retain the
promotional and training programs to the employees.
Advantages of Performance Appraisal:
Performance appraisal is believed to be an investment for the
company and the advantages are:
· Promotions:
Performance Appraisal helps
to evaluate the performance of the employees and conduct promotional programs or
training programs for the employees who are on average performance.
Employees who
are not able to improve even after training can be demoted or dismissed from
the services.
· Compensation: Performance appraisal helps in deciding
the compensation packages of the employees and rating depends on merit ranking
of their performance. Compensation packages includes salaries, bonus, allowances,
extra benefits, the compensation should depend on merits of performance rather
than seniority.
Employees Development:
· Performance appraisal helps to frame
training programs. It helps to analyze the strengths and weakness of the
employees so that new jobs and designations can be designed for the promotion
of employees.
· Selection
method:
As per the
performance appraisal results one can determine and improve the selection
methods of the employees. Improvements that helps for the betterment of
selection procedure are made with the help of performance appraisal.
· Communication:
Communication is important between the employee and employer in an
Organization.
It helps the
employers to accept the skills and weakness of the employees.
It creates
trust to the employees on the employers.
It boosts the
spirit of work and morale of the employees to perform better than the present.
The above
factors help in effective communication in the organization.
· Motivation:
Whenever an
employee is evaluated on his performance using performance appraisals and given
the worth compensation benefits like bonus, incentives etc. that is the
greatest motivation to the employees to perform better than the present.
Performance appraisal Tools
and Techniques:
1.
Ranking
2.
Paired Comparison
3.
Forced Distribution
4.
Confidential Report
5.
Essay Evaluation
6.
Critical Incident
7.
Checklists
8.
Graphic Rating Scale
9.
BARS
10.
Forced Choice Method
11.
MBO
12.
Field Review Technique
13.
Performance Test
Ranking:
·
Ranking is rating an
employee against his competitor on overall performance. Comparison of one
employee against another is done under same work group to know the better
performance. The position of an employee is done in terms of numerical rank.
Ranking is done according to their performance
levels.
It is easier to rank the best performance
employee and worst performance employee.
Limitations
of Ranking Method:
·
The “whole man” is
compared with another “whole man” in this method. In practice, it is very difficult
to compare individuals possessing various individual traits.
·
This method speaks only
of the position where an employee stands in his group. It does not test
anything about how much better or how much worse an employee is when compared
to another employee.
·
When a large number of
employees are working, ranking of individuals become a difficult issue.
·
There is no systematic
procedure for ranking individuals in the organization. The ranking system does
not eliminate the possibility of snap judgements.
Forced Distribution method
·
This is a ranking technique where raters are
required to allocate a certain percentage of rates to certain categories like
average, below average, excellent or percentiles (e.g.: top 10 percent, bottom
20 percent etc.). Both the number of categories and percentage of employees to
be allotted to each category are a function of performance appraisal design and
format. The workers of outstanding merit may be placed at top 10 percent of the
scale, the rest may be placed as 20 % good, 40 % outstanding, 20 % fair and 10
% fair.
Advantages:
·
This method avoids partiality of the raters and the judgement will be
impartial
·
By these predetermined rating method different opinions from different
uses can be avoided.
Limitations of Forced Distribution
· The
limitation of using this method in salary administration, however, is that it
may lead low morale, low productivity and high absenteeism.
· Employees
who feel that they are productive, but find themselves in lower grade (than
expected) feel frustrated and exhibit over a period of time reluctance to work.
Critical Incident techniques
Under this method, the manager prepares lists of
statements of very effective and ineffective behavior of an employee. These
critical incidents or events represent the outstanding or poor behavior of
employees or the job. The manager maintains logs of each employee, whereby he
periodically records critical incidents of the worker’s behavior. At the end of
the rating period, these recorded critical incidents are used in the evaluation
of the worker’s performance.
Example of a good critical incident of a
Customer Relations Officer is: March 12 - The Officer patiently attended to a customer’s
complaint. He was very polite and prompt in attending the customer’s problem.
Advantages of Critical Incident techniques
· This method provides an objective basis for
conducting a thorough discussion of an employee’s performance.
· This method avoids bias (most recent incidents
are too much emphasized)
Limitations of Critical Incident techniques
· Negative incidents may be more noticeable than
positive incidents.
· The supervisors have a tendency to unload a
series of complaints about the incidents during an annual performance review
sessions.
· It results in very close supervision which may
not be liked by an employee.
· The recording of incidents may be a chore for
the manager concerned, who may be too busy or may forget to do it.
Checklists and Weighted Checklists
In this system, a large number of statements that describe a specific
job are given. Each statement has a weight or scale value attached to it. While
rating an employee the supervisor checks all those statements that most closely
describe the behavior of the individual under assessment.
·
The rating sheet is then scored by averaging
the weights of all the statements checked by the rater. A checklist is
constructed for each job by having persons who are quite familiar with the
jobs. These statements are then categorized by the judges and weights are
assigned to the statements in accordance with the value attached by the judges.
Advantages of Checklists and Weighted Checklists
· Most frequently used method in evaluation of the
employee’s performance.
Limitations of Checklists and Weighted Checklists
· This method is very expensive and time consuming
· Rater may be biased in distinguishing the
positive and negative questions.
· It becomes difficult for the manager to
assemble, analyze and weigh a number of statements about the employee’s
characteristics, contributions and behaviors.
Performance Appraisal Bias:
Managers commit mistakes in evaluating the employees and
their performances, which mite spoil the performance appraisal and demotivate
the employees.
1. First Impression (primacy effect):
Raters form an overall impression about the ratee on the
basis of some particular characteristics of the ratee identified by them. The
identified qualities and features may not provide adequate base for appraisal.
2. Halo Effect:
The individual’s performance is completely appraised on the basis
of a perceived positive quality, feature or trait. In other words, this is the
tendency to rate a man uniformly high or low in other traits if he is extra-ordinarily
high or low in one particular trait. If a worker has few absences, his
supervisor might give him a high rating in all other areas of work.
3. Horn Effect:
The individual’s performance is completely appraised on the basis
of a negative quality or feature perceived. This results in an overall lower
rating than may be warranted. “He is not formally dressed up in the office. He
may be casual at work too!”.
4. Excessive Stiffness or Lenience:
Depending upon the raters own standards, values and physical and
mental makeup at the time of appraisal, ratees may be rated very strictly or
leniently. Some of the managers are likely to take the line of least resistance
and rate people high, whereas others, by nature, believe in the tyranny of
exact assessment, considering more particularly the drawbacks of the individual
and thus making the assessment excessively severe. The leniency error can
render a system ineffective. If everyone is to be rated high, the system has
not done anything to differentiate among the employees.
5. Central Tendency:
Appraisers rate all employees as average performers. That is, it
is an attitude to rate people as neither high nor low and follow the middle
path. For example, a professor, with a view to play it safe, might give a class
grade near the equal to B, regardless of the differences in individual
performances.
6. Personal Biases:
The way a supervisor feels about each of the individuals working
under him - whether he likes or dislikes them - as a tremendous effect on the
rating of their performances. Personal Bias can stem from various sources as a
result of information obtained from colleagues, considerations of faith and
thinking, social and family background and so on.
7. Spillover Effect:
The present performance is evaluated much on the basis of past
performance. “The person who was a good performer in distant past is assured to
be okay at present also”.
8. Recency Effect:
Rating is influenced by the most recent behavior ignoring the
commonly demonstrated behaviors during the entire appraisal period.
Therefore, while
appraising performances, all the above biases should be avoided.
Handling Employees After
Performance Appraisals
Job evaluation is a process of determining
the relative worth of a job. It is a process which is helpful even for framing
compensation plans by the personnel manager. Job evaluation as a process is
advantageous to a company in many ways:
Reduction in inequalities in salary structure
It is found that people and their motivation is dependent upon how
well they are being paid. Therefore, the main objective of job evaluation is to
have external and internal consistency in salary structure so that inequalities
in salaries are reduced.
1. Specialization –
Because of division of labor and thereby specialization, a large
number of enterprises have got hundred jobs and many employees to perform them.
Therefore, an attempt should be made to define a job and thereby fix salaries
for it. This is possible only through job evaluation.
2. Helps in selection of employees –
The job evaluation information can be helpful at the time of
selection of candidates. The factors that are determined for job evaluation can
be taken into account while selecting the employees.
3. Harmonious relationship between employees and
manager
Through job evaluation, harmonious and congenial relations can be
maintained between employees and management, so that all kinds of salaries
controversies can be minimized.
4. Standardization
The process of determining the salary differentials for
different jobs become standardized through job evaluation. This helps in
bringing uniformity into salary structure.
5. Relevance of new jobs –
Through job evaluation, one can understand the relative value of
new jobs in a concern.
Job evaluation
represents an effort to determine the relative value of every job in a plant
and to determine what the fair basic wage for such a job should be.
Thus, job evaluation is
different from performance appraisal. In job evaluation, worth of a job is
calculated while in performance appraisal, the worth of employee is
rated.
Employee
Stress - Strategies for managing stress at workplace
It is
a growing concern for organizations today. Stress can be defined as a lively
circumstance in which people face constraints, opportunities, or loss of
something they desire and for which the consequence is both unpredictable as
well as crucial. Stress is the response of people to the unreasonable/excessive
pressure or demands placed on them.
Stress is not always negative.
It may also bring out the best in individuals at times. It may induce an
individual to discover innovative and smarter way of doing things.
This
positive dimension of stress is called as en stress. But usually, the term
stress has a negative implication and this negative aspect of stress is termed
as distress.
For instance - When a subordinate is harassed or warned by his
superior, unhappiness of unsuitable job, etc. We can say that “Stress causes
some people to break, and other to break records.”
Symptoms
of Stress
Some of the symptoms of stress
at workplace are as follows-
- Absenteeism, escaping from work
responsibilities, arriving late, leaving early, etc.
- Deterioration in work performance,
more of error prone work, memory loss, etc.
- Cribbing, over-reacting, arguing,
getting irritated, anxiety, etc.
- Deteriorating health, more of
accidents, etc.
- Improper eating habits (over-eating
or under-eating), excessive smoking and drinking, sleeplessness, etc.
It is thus very essential to
have effective stress management strategies in an organization so that the
detrimental repercussions of stress on the employees as well as their
performance can be reduced and controlled.
Sources/Causes
of Stress
The factors leading to stress
among individual are called as stressors. Some of the factors/stressors acting
on employees are-
1. Organizational factors- With the growth in organizational stress
and complexity, there is increase in organizational factors also which cause
stress among employees. Some of such factors are-
· Discrimination
in pay/salary structure
· Strict
rules and regulations
· Ineffective
communication
· Peer
pressure
· Goals
conflicts/goals ambiguity
· More
of centralized and formal organization structure
· Less
promotional opportunities
· Lack
of employee’s participation in decision-making
· Excessive
control over the employees by the managers
Individual factors-
There are various expectations which the
family members, peer, superior and subordinates have from the employee. Failure
to understand such expectations or to convey such expectations lead to role
ambiguity/role conflict which in turn causes employee stress. Other individual
factors causing stress among employees are inherent personality traits such as
being impatient, aggressive, rigid, feeling time pressure always, etc.
Similarly, the family issues, personal financial problems, sudden career
changes all lead to stress.
Job concerning factors-
Certain factors related to job which cause
stress among employees are as follows-
a. Monotonous
nature of job
b. Unsafe
and unhealthy working conditions
c. Lack
of confidentiality
d. Crowding
Extra-organizational
factors-
There
are certain issues outside the organization which lead to stress among
employees. In today’s modern and technology savvy world, stress has increased.
Inflation, technological change, social responsibilities and rapid social
changes are other extra-organizational factors causing stress.
Strategies
for Managing Stress
Stress
experienced by the employees in their job has negative impact on their health,
performance and their behavior in the organization. Thus, stress needs to be
managed effectively to set off these harmful consequences. Strategies for
managing stress are as follows-
Organizational
strategies for managing stress
1. Encouraging
more of organizational communication with the employees so that there is no
role ambiguity/conflict. Effective communication can also change employee
views. Managers can use better signs and symbols which are not misinterpreted
by the employees.
2. Encourage
employees’ participation in decision-making. This will reduce role stress.
3. Grant
the employees greater independence, meaningful and timely feedback, and greater
responsibility.
4. The
organizational goals should be realistic, stimulating and particular. The
employees must be given feedback on how well they are heading towards these
goals.
5. Encourage decentralization.
6. Have a
fair and just distribution of incentives and salary structure.
7. Promote
job rotation and job enrichment.
8. Create
a just and safe working environment.
9. Have
effective hiring and orientation procedure.
10. Appreciate
the employees on accomplishing and over-exceeding their targets.
Individual
strategies for managing stress
1. The
employees should make a “to-do” list daily, prioritize the acts in the list and
plan the acts accordingly. Take regular breaks during work to relax you. By
effective time management, the employees can achieve their targets timely and
can meet work pressures and, thus, avoid stress.
2. Do
hard work. Strive to achieve your goals but do not do it to the harm of family,
health, or peer.
3. Indulge
in physical exercises. It helps in effective blood circulation, keeps you fit,
diverts mind from work pressures.
4. Encourage
a healthy lifestyle. Take a regular sleep, have plenty of water, have healthy
eating habits. Promote relaxation techniques such as yoga, listening music and
meditation.
5. The
employees should have optimistic approach about their work. They should avoid
connections with negative approach employees.
6. The
employees should have emotional intelligence at workplace. They should have
self-awareness, self-confidence and self-control at workplace.
7. The
employees should build social support. They should have close connections with
trustworthy peer who can listen to their problems and boost their confidence
level. This social network will help the employees to overcome stress.
8. Employee
counselling is a very good strategy to overcome employee stress. Through
counselling, employees can become aware of their strengths and how to develop
those strengths; their weaknesses and how to eliminate them; and they can
develop strategies for changing their behavior. Employees are also given career
counselling which helps in reducing their ambiguities with regard to career.
9. Find a
fun way to release stress, such as, cracking jokes, playing tennis, golf, etc.
10. Do not
remain preoccupied with yourself. Turn your focus outwards. Help others. This
will release some stress.
Employee Stress and
Performance
Employee Stress is
negatively correlated to their work performance. In short, more the level of stress, lower is
the performance. It was conventionally perceived that reasonable levels of
stress would boost the employees and improve their work performance. But this
perception no longer holds true. Today it is believed that even a little bit of
stress will inhibit employees’ work performance.
This is due to:
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Even relatively slight stress distracts an
employee. People facing stress concentrate more on the repulsive feelings and
emotions rather than on the work/job at hand and consequently their work
performance suffers. Stress affects people’s intellectual, emotional, and
interpersonal functioning.
Extended or repeated exposure even to minor
levels of stress may have detrimental effects on health and this might
lower employee’s work performance.
But there are
certain exceptions to the rule that stress interferes with work
performance. For instance, some people are at their best in times of
calamity / crises. They meet the expectations and show remarkable
performance at times of great stress. This may stem out from the fact that
they have great expertise in the tasks being performed, making their
variation/inflection as very high. People who have exceptional skills and
competencies at a task may cognitively evaluate a possibly stressful
scenario as a challenge and not as a threat.
Thus, while concluding we can say that
whether stress can spoil or increase performance is dependent on factors
such as work complication, the skills and expertise of the employee in
performing a task, personal traits of individuals/employees involved, etc.
Organizations which encourage an open and honest communication develop an
environment in which employees are less likely to be stressed out.
Employee Discipline and
Features of a Sound Disciplinary System
Discipline means systematically conducting the
business by the organizational members who strictly adhere to the essential
rules and regulations.
These
employees/organizational members work together as a team so as to achieve
organizational mission as well as vision and they truly understand that the
individual and group aims and desires must be matched so as to ensure
organizational success.
A disciplined employee will
be organized and an organized employee will be disciplined always. Employee
behavior is the base of discipline in an organization. Discipline implies
confirming with the code of conduct established by the organization.
Discipline
in an organization ensures productivity and efficiency. It encourages
harmony and co-operation among employees as well as acts as a morale
booster for the employees. In absence of discipline, there will be chaos,
confusion, corruption and disobedience in an organization.
In short, discipline
implies obedience, orderliness and maintenance of proper subordination
among employees.
Work
recognition, fair and equitable treatment of employees, appropriate salary
structure, effective grievance handling and job-security all contribute to
organizational discipline.
Discipline is viewed from
two angles/dimensions:
1.
Positive
Discipline:
Positive
Discipline implies discipline without punishment. The main aim is to ensure
and encourage self-discipline among the employees. The employees in this
case identify the group objectives as their own objectives and strive hard
to achieve them. The employees follow and adhere to the rules and
regulations not due to the fear of punishment but due to the inherent
desire to harmonize in achieving organizational goals. Employees exercise
self-control to meet these goals.
2.
Negative Discipline:
Employees
adhere to rules and regulations in fear of punishment which may be in form
of fines, penalties, demotions or transfers. In this case, the employees do
not perceive organizational goals as their own goals. The action taken by
the management to ensure desired standard of behavior/code of conduct from
the employees in an organization is called negative discipline. The fear of
punishment prevents the employees from going off-track.
Characteristics of a Sound Disciplinary System (Red Hot
Stove Rule)
Discipline should be
imposed without generating resentment. The “red hot
stove rule” which says that a sound and effective disciplinary system in an
organization should have the following characteristics-
1. Immediate-
Just as when you touch a red-hot stove,
the burn is immediate, similarly the penalty for violation should be
immediate/ immediate disciplinary action must be taken for violation of
rules.
2.
Consistent-
Just
as red-hot stove burns everyone in same manner; likewise, there should be
high consistency in a sound disciplinary system.
3.
Impersonal-
Just
as a person is burned because he touches the red-hot stove and not because
of any personal feelings, likewise, impersonality should be maintained by
refraining from personal or subjective feelings.
4.
Prior
warning and notice-
Just as an
individual has a warning when he moves closer to the stove that he would be
burned on touching it, likewise, a sound disciplinary system should give
advance warning to the employees as to the implications of not conforming
to the standards of behavior/code of conduct in an organization.
In short, a sound disciplinary system presupposes-
1.
Acquaintance/Knowledge
of rules-
The
employees should be aware of the desired code of conduct/ standards of behavior
in the organization. This code of discipline should be published in
employee handbook.
2.
Timely action-
Timely inquiry should be conducted for breaking the code of conduct in an
organization. The more later the inquiry is made, the more forgetful one
becomes and the more he feels that punishment is not deserved.
3.
Fair
and just action-
There
should be same punishment for same offence/ misconduct. There should be no favoritism.
Discipline should be uniformly enforced always.
4. Positive approach- The disciplinary system should be
preventive and not punitive. Concentrate on preventing misconduct and not
on imposing penalties. The employees should not only be explained the
reason for actions taken against them but also how such fines and penalties
can be avoided in future.
Types
of Penalties for Misconduct/Indiscipline
For not following the
standards of behavior/code of conduct in an organization, there are two
kinds of penalties categorized as-
a.
Major
penalties-
This
includes demotion, dismissal, transfer, discharge, withholding increments,
etc.
b.
Minor
penalties-
This
includes oral warning, written warning, fines, loss of privileges, etc.
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