Question

Learning Outcome: please long answer and no hand writing

3. Describe the impact of diversity and the changing workforce on organizations and organizational performance.

4. Examine the role of HR as a strategic partner in an organization

Assignment Workload:

This assignment is an individual assignment.

The word count for this assignment must be between 800 to 1000 words

Case Study

B.R Investments is a reputed finance company having 15 branches in different part of the country. In the home office there are more than 200 employees. This company has a performance rating under which the employees are rated at six months intervals by a committee of two executives. Graphic scales have been used as means of appraisal. The qualities considered are responsibility, initiative, and interest in work, leadership potential, co-operative attitude and community activity. After the performance is evaluated, the ratings are discussed with the concerned employees by their immediate boss who counsels them. The ratings aroused to influence promotions and salary adjustments the employees and also as a criterion for assigning further rating for them.

Recently three employees of the company called on the company’s president to express their dissatisfaction with the ratings they had received. Their scores and composite ratings had been discussed with them. Because their ratings were comparatively low, they had been denied annual increments in salary. Approximately, two thirds of all the employees received such increments. The aggrieved employees argued that their ratings did not accurately represent their qualifications or performance. They insisted that “community activity” was not actually a part of their job and that what they do off the job is none of the company’s business. They expressed their opinion that employees should organize union and insist that salary increase be automatic.

The threat of a union caused concern to the officers of the company. This particular experience convinced the top officers that ratings may represent a serious hazard to satisfactory relationship with employees. Even the chief executive finds that performance appraisal is a dangerous source of friction and its hazards outweigh its values; so it should be discontinued altogether.

Questions:

1. How far do you agree with the management that performance appraisal should be discontinued?

2. If you were the HR manager, how would you tackle the situation?

3. What modifications would you suggest in the performance appraisal system of the company?

Answer 1

1. I believe that performance appraisal is a mandatory and integral part of employee management and in order to understand how an employee performs in the organization it is the only alternative and organization possess. I do not feel that peeformance appraisal should be discontinued at all instaed the process can be developed and made more transparent so that employees are satified with what they receive as part of their performance appraisal. There has been a lot of specualtions reagarding the existence and validity of performance appraisal and it is true that it plays an important role inthis aspect. The overall improvement of the ompany and the performance of the employees are dependent on performance appraisals. The organization possess 200 employees and everybody cannot be given equal slary increase because the type of job they do is different and the level of effort they put in also different, and therefore the ratings are the reference by which the annual hike of the employees should be determined and decided. Therefore I would rather make it a point that performance appraisal should be present and the process should be made important and developed in order to yield better results fro the organizatio as a whole.

2. As the HR manager I would have changed the total process of the appraisal but appraisal has to be present as this is a type of evaluation that is important for the organization and its employees. I have always thought of a more transparent and convenient process and distributed as well so that the evaluation is not dependent only one or two person rather the fedbacks should be collected from each and every person the individual has worked with and that should be considered as wee in the total process. For example if a person is working in a project team then the feedbacks should be collected from the manager, team leader, colleagues bith senior and junior and even the client and after considering each and every aspect the rating s should be decided. This is the ideal situation but internally this does not happen and an employee is evaluated based on teh perspctive of the managar and the team leader primarily. This makes the thing difficult because a human being has to have rater bias and that is the reason it was suggested to collect feedbacks from many and when it si collected from a person or two this rater bias may play an important role and affect the rating. I will make the process more transparent and will aim to make the stakeholders satisfied with what they get as the decision is actually a collective process.

3. As conveyed the total process needs to be adjusted in order to make the process fruitful which it actually is not. Therefore the modifications should be made in:

1. The expectationlevel of the employer shoudl be communicated to the employee thoroughly with details and it should be documented so that there is no discrepancy in the future.

2. The expectations are segregated and segmented into goals or objectives and this process hsould be effective and the goals defined should be as per the requirement and not something vague with respect to the expectations.

3. The goal defining process should be a mutual process in which the employees and the managers both have to agree or else there is no point.

4. As this a semi yearly process so employees need to update the progress that they have done regarding the goals and that should be done on paeriodic manner.

5. The feedback collection as conveyed needs to be done from the managers, team leader, colleagues and client.

6, The rating should be determined based on all these factors.