Better Measures of Performance at Bi-Corp Dianne Byrd had been in her role as HR manager at Bi-Corp Plastics for just over three months. A recent graduate of an HRM program at a local university, Dianne saw many opportunities for improving the human resources management function at the five-year-old company. Bi-Corp manufactures plastic couplings and piping for a variety of home construction applications. The workforce is comprised of office, sales, and manufacturing teams with a total of 127 employees on the payroll. At her first quarterly meeting with the CEO, Ted Moorhead, Dianne brought forward a concern about the company's approach to, and inconsistent application of, performance appraisals in several of its departments. A recent audit of personnel files showed that at least four departments had not completed any type of appraisal in the past three years. Dianne's investigation also showed several common rater errors among a number of company supervisors. "I don't know if you have heard about job characteristics theory," said Karen to Ted, "but employees benefit from regular feedback on how they are doing their daily work. I am afraid our current approach to performance management is not allowing the identification of areas for productivity improvement. It also does not create enough opportunities to recognize exceptional efforts by our sales and manufacturing teams. We should be focusing more on both behavioral and outcome-based performance measures to help set ourselves in a more competitive position in our sector." Dianne then presented three recommendations that she said could be immediately implemented with Ted's support. 1. Create a new policy and procedure to emphasize contemporary approaches to performance management at Bi-Corp. 2. Establish a task force, made up of supervisory and front-line staff in the sales, office, and production departments, to investigate and design either a behavioral or outcome-based performance appraisal system to be piloted in three different areas of the company over the next 18 months. 3. Allocate $3 500 from the HR department's training and development budget to introduce all employees in the pilot program areas to the new approaches to performance appraisals. This training would also emphasize common supervisor rater errors and steps to be taken to avoid such mistakes. Ted concluded this part of their meeting by indicating his full support of Dianne's three-point plan. He agreed that the three pilot programs should include the company's manufacturing "Team B," all office employees including administrative staff, and all sales employees. Dianne promised to create a more detailed action plan and proposed a task force membership list for all three areas, which she would forward to Ted by the beginning of the following week. At that point, their discussion moved on to the next agenda item.

1 - Assume you are developing one component of the proposed supervisory training program regarding performance appraisals at Bi-Corp. Identify two key elements you would include in guiding managers to help them conduct a successful appraisal interview with an employee.

2 - Let's assume that the pilot program in the sales department at Bi-Corp recommends a management by objectives approach to appraisals of all sales staff.

(a)   Why is such an approach of strategic importance to the company?

(b)   Discuss two advantages of such an approach for this department.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 Two key elements to guide managers in conducting a successful appraisal interview with an employee are a Preparation Managers should be encouraged t... View the full answer