PS390 Unit 5 Performance Management Paper Example

A Three Out of Five Once a Year: A PS390 Unit 5 Performance Appraisal Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS390: Introduction to Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Unit 5 Performance Appraisal Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the call center, the employees and every figure are composite and illustrative; the articles cited are real.

The Annual Review

Each December, supervisors at our Charlotte customer service center rated every representative on a five-point scale across six areas, from attendance to teamwork, and wrote a short comment. Ratings determined small merit raises. Last year, eighty-one percent of representatives received an overall three. In a survey I ran in January, most representatives said the review did not tell them anything new, and many could not describe what a four would require. Supervisors said the reviews took three weeks of evenings and felt like paperwork.

Where the December Review Went Wrong

Pulakos and O'Leary (2011) traced the failure of performance management in many workplaces not to the rating forms but to the way the process is disconnected from the daily work of managing people. Annual reviews ask supervisors to summarize a year of performance in one meeting, feedback comes too late to be useful, and the link to pay makes the conversation defensive. They recommended focusing on ongoing expectations, feedback and development woven into regular work, rather than refining forms.

DeNisi and Murphy (2017) took stock of the century of research since the first studies of how supervisors rate employees. For decades, studies chased better rating scales and fewer rater mistakes, and gained little. In their reading, the setting and aims of a review, whether employees find it fair and whether anyone improves afterward count for more than the exact form, and researchers had rarely checked that last question.

Our review rated people precisely enough to give them all a three and helpfully enough to change nothing.

Why Do It at All

Abolishing appraisal entirely was one option some supervisors favored. Aguinis et al. (2011) addressed exactly that frustration, arguing that people hate performance management mainly because it is done poorly, and that when done well, with clear expectations, ongoing feedback and links to development, it benefits employees, managers and organizations. Representatives in our survey wanted more feedback, not less; they just wanted it to be useful.

The Pilot: Monthly Check-Ins

Two supervisors volunteered to pilot a new approach with their teams for six months. Each representative meets with the supervisor for twenty minutes once a month. Before the meeting, the representative receives a one-page summary of their own data: call quality scores from recorded calls, first-call resolution, schedule adherence and customer survey comments. The conversation covers three questions: what went well, what one skill to work on next month, and what the supervisor can do to help. The agreed skill and the supervisor's commitment are recorded in two sentences.

What a Check-In Sounds Like

One check-in from the pilot shows the difference. Denise, a representative with two years on the floor, came to her April meeting with a quality score that had dipped on "explains next steps." Her supervisor started by mentioning a call Denise had handled well, a customer whose payment arrangement had been canceled by mistake, and asked what had made it go smoothly. Then she played thirty seconds of a different call in which Denise ended without telling the caller when a field crew would arrive. Denise said she often skipped that step because the outage system did not always show crew times. Her supervisor agreed to raise the system problem with the outage team, and Denise agreed to tell callers what she did know and when to call back. The whole meeting took eighteen minutes. Under the old system, the same issue would have appeared, if at all, as a vague comment in December.

Preparing Supervisors

The pilot supervisors received a half-day of preparation before starting. They practiced giving specific feedback tied to a recorded call, asking open questions before offering solutions and ending with a concrete commitment from both sides. They also practiced the hardest conversations, such as a representative who disputes a quality score or becomes upset. Both supervisors said the practice mattered more than the written guide, because the old reviews had never required them to give feedback face to face every month.

Using Data Without Being Ruled by It

Call centers have abundant data, and the risk is reducing people to numbers. The pilot uses data to start the conversation, not to settle it. A representative with long handle times may be the one taking the hardest outage calls; the summary includes the type of calls handled so that supervisors see context. Quality scores come from recorded calls rated with an anchored checklist, which representatives can listen to themselves.

Pay and the Year-End Decision

Merit raises still need a decision. In the pilot, the year-end rating draws on the twelve monthly records, so the December meeting confirms what both people already know rather than revealing it. Pulakos and O'Leary's concern about pay making conversations defensive is partly addressed by keeping the monthly meetings focused on development, with pay discussed only at year end.

Fairness

Representatives must see the process as fair for it to work. The pilot gives each representative access to the same data the supervisor sees, a chance to add context before each meeting and a path to request a second supervisor's review of quality scores they dispute.

Early Results

After three months, representatives on the pilot teams rated the usefulness of feedback far higher than those on other teams, and both supervisors reported spending less total time than on the old December reviews. Quality scores on the pilot teams rose slightly; it is too early to say whether the change will last, and the two pilot teams may differ from the rest of the floor in ways that explain part of the difference. At six months, the center manager will decide whether to extend the check-ins to all supervisors, based on the survey results, quality scores and the time logs supervisors have kept. If the approach expands, the old December form will be retired rather than kept alongside it, so that supervisors are not asked to do both.

Conclusion

The annual review gave almost everyone a three and helped no one improve, consistent with Pulakos and O'Leary's diagnosis of broken performance management. DeNisi and Murphy's review shifts attention from rating forms to fairness, purpose and improvement, and Aguinis and colleagues argue that well-run performance management is worth keeping. Monthly data-based check-ins are the center's attempt to do it well.

References

Aguinis, H., Joo, H., & Gottfredson, R. K. (2011). Why we hate performance management, and why we should love it. Business Horizons, 54(6), 503-507. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2011.06.001

DeNisi, A. S., & Murphy, K. R. (2017). Performance appraisal and performance management: 100 years of progress? Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 421-433. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000085

Pulakos, E. D., & O'Leary, R. S. (2011). Why is performance management broken? Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 4(2), 146-164. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-9434.2011.01315.x