The Behavioral Approach

The Behavioral Approach:

Ø  Attempts to define the behaviors and employee must exhibits to be effective in the job.

Ø  The various techniques define those behaviors and then require managers to assess the extent to which employees exhibits them.

Critical Incidents

Ø  This approach requires managers to keep a record of specific examples of effective and ineffective performance on the part of each employee.

Ø  Feedback About Employee: What they do well? What they do poorly?

Ø  Many Managers resist having to keep a daily or weekly log of their employee’s behavior.

Ø  It is also often difficult to compare employees because each incident is specific to that individual. 

Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS)

Ø  Builds on the critical incidents approach.

Ø  It is designed to specifically define performance dimensions by developing behavioral anchors associated with different levels of performance.

Ø  To develop a BARS, gather a large number of critical incidents that represents effective and ineffective performances on the job.

Ø  These incidents are classified into performances dimensions, and the ones that experts agree clearly represent a particular level of performances are used as behavior example( or anchors) to guide raters.

Organization Behavior Modification (OBM)

Ø  OBM entails managing the behavior of employee through a formal system of behavioral feedback and reinforcement.

Ø  Behaviorist View of Motivation: Individual’s future behavior is determined by the past behavior that has been positively reinforced.

Ø  OB Modi. Have four components:

o   Define a set of key behavior necessary for job performance.

o   Use a measurement system to assess whether these behaviors are exhibited.

o   Manager or consultant informs employee of those behaviors, setting goals for how often the employees should exhibit those behaviors.

o   Feedback and reinforcement are provided to employees.

The Attribute Approach

The Attribute Approach

Ø  The attribute approach to performance management focuses on the extent to which individual have certain attributes (characteristics or trait e.g. initiative, leadership, and competitiveness) believed desirable for the company’s success.

Graphics Rating Scale:

Ø  A list of traits is evaluated by a five-points (or more) rating scale.

Ø  The manager considers one employee at a time, circling the number that signifies how much of that trait the individual has.

Ø  Carefully constructed graphic rating scales have a number of advantages:

o   Standardization of content permitting comparison of employees.

o   Ease of development use and relatively low development and usage cost.

o   Reasonably high rater and ratee acceptance.

Ø  A disadvantage of such rating scales is that they are susceptible to rating errors which result in inaccurate appraisals. Possible rating errors include halo effect.

Performance Dimensions	Rating
	Distinguished	Excellent	Commendable	Adequate	Poor
Knowledge	5	4	3	2	1
Communication	5	4	3	2	1
Judgment	5	4	3	2	1
Managerial Skill	5	4	3	2	1
Quality  Performance	5	4	3	2	1
Teamwork	5	4	3	2	1
Interpersonal skills	5	4	3	2	1
Initiative	5	4	3	2	1
Creativity	5	4	3	2	1
Problem solving	5	4	3	2	1

Performance Appraisal Methods

Performance Appraisal Methods

Ø  We can manage performance by focusing on employee attributes, behaviors, or results.

Ø  We can measure performance in a relative way, making overall comparisons among individuals’ performance.

Approaches are:

Ø  The Comparative Approach.

Ø  The Attribute Approach.

Ø  The Behavioral Approach.

Ø  The Result Approach.

The Comparative Approach

Ø  Rater compares an individual’s performance with that of others.

Ø  Comparative methods require that managers directly compare the performance of their employees against one another. For example, a data-entry operator’s performance would be compared with that of other data-entry operators by the computing supervisor.

Ø  Comparative techniques include ranking, paired comparison, and forced distribution.

Ranking Method

Ø  RANKING: The ranking method consists of listing all employees from highest to lowest in performance.

Ø  The primary drawback of the ranking method is that the size of the differences among individuals is not well defined. For example, there may be little difference in performance between individuals ranked second and third, but a big difference in performance between those ranked third and fourth.

Forced Distribution:

Ø  The forced distribution method also uses a ranking format, but employees are ranked in groups.

Ø  This technique requires the manager to put certain percentages of employees into predetermined categories.

Ø  With the forced distribution method, the ratings of employees’ performance are distributed along a bell-shaped curve.

Ø  Forced distribution on Bell shape curve:

Drawbacks to the Forced Distribution:

Ø  One problem is that a supervisor may resist (struggle, fight) placing any individual in the lowest (or the highest) group.

Ø  Difficulties may arise when the Rater must explain to the employee why he or she was placed in one grouping and others were placed in higher groupings.

Ø  Further, with small groups, there may be no reason to assume that a bell-shaped distribution of performance really exists.

Ø  Finally, in some cases the manager may feel forced to make distinctions among employees that may not exist.

Paired Comparison:

Ø  The Paired Comparison method requires managers to compare every employee with other employee in the work group, giving an employee a score of 1 every time he or she is considered the higher performer.

Ø  Once all the pairs have been compared, the manager computes the number of times each employee received the favorable decision.

Ø  Drawback: Time consuming method.

The Performance Appraisal Process

The Performance Appraisal Process:

Who are the raters?

Ø  The immediate managers or supervisors.

Ø  The employee’s peers.

Ø  Self-appraisal.

Ø  Employees’ subordinate.

Ø  A higher level manager.

Ø  Personnel department specialists, rating committees.

Ø  Clients (360-degree PA system).

Performance being measured against such factors:

Ø  Job knowledge

Ø  Quality and Quantity of output

Ø  Initiative, leadership skills and need for supervision

Ø  Dependability, cooperation(interpersonal impact, relation with co-workers, subordinates)

Ø  Judgment, versatility

Ø  Community services: involvement of staff in social activities

Appraisal Involves:

Ø  Setting work standards

Ø  Assessing the employee’s actual performance relative to these standards

Ø  Providing feedback to the employee with the aim of motivating that person to eliminate deficiencies or to continue to perform above par (equivalence, average, balance).

Steps in Appraising Performance:

(1)   Defining the Job:

Ø  Making sure that you and your subordinate agree on his or her duties and job standards.

(2)   Appraising Performance:

Ø  Means comparing your subordinate’s actual performance to the standards that have been set.

Ø  Some type of rating form

(3)   Feedback:

Ø  Discuss the subordinate’s performance and progress

Ø  Make plan for any development required