7.5 Performance Planning & Evaluation
Along with employee orientation and training, new employees learn about performance expectations through performance planning and evaluation. Managers provide employees with expectations about the job. These are communicated as job objectives, schedules, deadlines, and product and/or service quality requirements. As an employee performs job tasks, the supervisor periodically evaluates the employee’s efforts. A performance appraisal is a comparison of actual performance with expected performance to determine an employee’s contributions to the organization and to make decisions about training, compensation, promotion, and other job changes. The performance planning and appraisal process is shown in Figure 7.8: “Performance Planning and Evaluation” and described below.
- The manager establishes performance standards.
- The employee works to meet the standards and expectations.
- The employee’s supervisor evaluates the employee’s work in terms of quality and quantity of output and various characteristics such as job knowledge, initiative, relationships with others, and attendance and punctuality.
- Following the performance evaluation, reward (pay raise) and job change (promotion) decisions can be made. If work is unsatisfactory, the employee may be put on a performance improvement plan, which outlines the behaviours or performance that must be improved, the milestones and time periods to improve performance, and what will occur if performance is not improved.
- Rewards are positive feedback and provide reinforcement, or encouragement, for the employee to continue improving their performance.
It was once common practice for performance approvals to be conducted on an annual basis, but most companies have moved away from that standard. Instead, managers are encouraged to provide employees with continuous real-time feedback so that skill development and job performance can be improved more rapidly.
Information for performance appraisals can be assembled using rating scales, supervisor logs of employee job incidents, and reports of sales and production statistics. Regardless of the source, performance information should be accurate and a record of the employee’s job behaviour and efforts. Table 7.3 illustrates a rating scale for one aspect of a college recruiter’s job. A rating of “9” is considered outstanding job behaviour and performance; a rating of “1” is viewed as very poor to unacceptable.
| Example of Behavior-Based Rating Scale for Performance Appraisal | ||
|---|---|---|
| Position: College Recruiter | ||
| Job Description: Visits campuses and conducts interviews of graduating seniors | ||
| Explanation of Rating | Performance Rating | |
| This recruiter plans and organizes a spring-semester college-recruiting schedule to minimize travel expenses and maximize the number of colleges visited and students interviewed. | 9 | |
| Even with tight travel schedules between campuses, this recruiter completes each ca