Ch. 8 Discussion Post

1. Concept and Brief Description

2. Emotional Hook (provocative question/claim/real-life problem)

3. Key Points to Elicit in Discussion

4. Facilitative Questions

1. Performance management primarily deals with assessing employees’ performance with them so that they understand what they are doing right or wrong. The key is to start with your strategic objective and identify what the standard for the position is that the employee needs to meet. The interesting part of this section for me was the errors that managers frequently make when measuring performance. With a contrast error, the manager does not compare the employee to the objective standard, but instead compares the employee to other employees. This is an error because the employee you’re comparing them to may be performing well above the standard. Additionally, this makes the evaluation subjective. Distributional errors occur when managers, for whatever reason, tend to lean one way or another on the rating scale. More lenient managers give mostly good ratings, strict managers give mostly poor ratings, and managers with a central tendency just place everyone in the middle. Lastly, a manager may either be inclined to look past someone’s faults (the halo effect) or look past their strengths (the horns effect.)

2. Have you ever been the victim of an erroneous performance assessment?

3. I think assessment errors occur more commonly than we may think. I know in my performance evaluating I have definitely committed the contrast error. I tend to use my top performing sales reps as the standard and compare everyone else against them. The problem with this is it leaves the lower performers feeling judged. People need a set standard by which to compare themselves too. I think as far as ratings go, I don’t have a problem assessing an attribute or behavior exactly where it sits. I most frequently use a Graphic Rating Scale (one that lists attributes/behaviors and has a “5,4,3,2,1” next to it.) Usually there will be a mix of high and low ratings.

4. Have you ever been in a position where you needed to evaluate someone’s performance? How did you do it? Looking back, have you ever accidentally committed any of the common errors of performance measurement? Which ones? How was the employee affected?

Ch. 8 Class Reflections

Today we discussed interviews and screening tactics. I found it interesting that despite the fact that resumes are the most frequently used method of qualifying applicants, they are by far the least effective. Apparently, around 80% of resumes are full of lies! (and 100% are certainly at a minimum severely embellished.) They are useful for a few things though. They help you filter out people based on criteria such as degrees or certification. They allow you to check specifics. Also they allow you to see how much a person actually wants the job. If a person takes the time to make a personalized resume for this particular job, they will stand out against someone who turns in a generalized, mass produced resume. We also discussed interviewing. I was surprised how careful you must be when interviewing. I will definitely be aware of how I interview potential employees in the future.