Organizational Behavior and Leadership

Organizational Behavior and Leadership

The quality performance evaluation is a vital tool for management and is used in developing high quality, enthusiastic and capable working employees (Kreitner, 2007). An ethical and performance evaluation should actually never show or embrace the attitude of the evaluator. The evaluator needs to keep a record of each and every employee’s activity such as performance, whether favorable or one that needs a corrective action (Kreitner, 2007).

In this case study the main concerns is the ability of the manager to carry out an effective evaluation that would be impartial with regard to the attitude the fellow employees hold against the engineer. Another concern is the lack of confidence on the performance method used by the company. For instance, the engineer is resentful against the system since it focuses on one aspect of the employee. The last concern is the manager’s intents of skipping the annual review only because some members of the staff were not pleased by the previous evaluation. The manager needs to restructure the evaluation instrument rather than skipping this essential corporate procedure.

The most common sets of criteria used in performance evaluation include contribution and skills criteria. In the contribution criteria, the employees’ overall contribution to the overall goals and mission of the company is assessed (Miner, 2007). For instance, the employee is normally assessed on the basis of sale figures, successful conferences led, contracts negotiated and other task orientated criteria.

The other set of the employee evaluation criteria normally involves examining the employee’s skill set. For instance, an employee may have excellent technical skills with the ability to troubleshoot technical difficulties or reconfigure computer systems with an ease, but may be struggling when communicating with fellow employees (Miner, 2007). Another employee may be good in establishing strong rapport with the customer, but may be extremely poor in the documentation and paperwork. When assessing the employee’s weakness or strength of skill set criteria, it normally includes communication skill, technical skills, accuracy with numbers, problem solving and adherence to corporate philosophy (Miner, 2007).

When comparing the two sets of criteria used in evaluation, they actually bear some differences. For instance, evaluation based on the contribution to the company may to some extent be bias as compared to the skill set criteria (Bolman, 1991). This is because when the overall performance of the company is low, the contribution of an industrious individual may be overlooked since most functions are normally multifaceted among several employees in the company.

Employer is normally assessed by various people in the organization. This includes supervisors, peers and subordinates. Inclusion of these individuals in the evaluation allows an employee to understand how their performance is viewed by supervisors, subordinates peers and the external customers (Bolman, 1991). It normally provides a more rounded response from all levels of the organization. Another advantage of this inclusion is that all team members become more efficient, effective and accountable to each other since they can provide an extremely valuable comment to each other on the way they are performing (Bolman, 1991).

This type of evaluation further validates the performance information since it is based on the comments and judgment of various individuals. In addition, this method is essential since it provides an employee with more specific information that is beneficial for both career and personal developmental needs (Bolman, 1991). This evaluation normally reduces the possibilities of a supervisor to rate an employee with regard to his latest interactions. Inclusion of all these individuals in the process increases the credibility of the performance evaluation system since the employees obtain feedback from all directions including individuals that work with them on the daily basis (Bolman, 1991).

Even though the involvement of peers, supervisors and subordinate staff is advantageous, there are also some disadvantages. Their involvement normally makes the performance evaluation process to be more time intensive and administratively complex (Schermerhorn, 2000). Furthermore, the giving and getting feedback can sometimes be intimidating to some employees and thus requires a considerable training of both those who are receiving evaluation and those conducting the evaluation. In addition, there is actually no way to hold the anonymous raters accountable when the evaluation process is completed poorly. Another disadvantage is that raters can actually band together in order to give the personnel either undue high or low rating (Schermerhorn, 2000).

There are various methods used to analyze the accuracy of performance evaluation data. Some of these methods include statistical test, mechanical techniques and interpretation of case studies and interviews (Schermerhorn, 2000). In the statistical test, the collected data are normally analyzed using statistical tests while mechanical methods use computers and other mechanical devices to analyze the performance data gathered. This method is normally easy to analyze the data compared to interpretation of case study and interview method (Schermerhorn, 2000).

Even though the performance evaluation is normally intended to be unprejudiced account of an employer, this is not always the case. In most instances, error and prejudices normally lead to deflation or inflation of the employee’s evaluation scores (Schermerhorn, 2000). One of the common biases is stereotyping. Evaluators who normally fail to recognize and promptly respond to their own personal stereotyping tendencies may actually end up giving lower evaluation to those employees whom they perceive negatively and positive evaluations to those they actually perceive as being positive. For instance, if an evaluator stereotypes the young worker as being lazy, he is actually more likely to pass negative evaluations regardless of the level of his productiveness (Schermerhorn, 2000).

Another common bias is the halo effects which actually refer to the tendency of an individual to let the initial impression of individual cloud his future interactions. The first impression a person gets is normally the long-lasting impression (Miner, 2005). Therefore, when this effect is on play, it is normally difficult to modify the way the evaluator perceives them after their initial impression. In addition, some evaluators tend to highly rate those employees whom they feel to be similar compared to those they consider to be different (Miner, 2005).

Interactive technique is the best and appropriate technique that needs to be embraced by this company for performance evaluation process. This is because there is normally an input from the employee before evaluation, and most of the information in the evaluation is normally developed by the employee and the manager (Miner, 2005). Before corporate evaluation, the employee is normally inquired to hand in self-evaluation that the manager incorporates in his final evaluation process. This technique will actually make an engineer feel as being part of the evaluation process and will actually help the engineer to understand what is expected of him by the company.