You are Mark Delcor, associate store manager at a local outlet of a major discount department store chain. You are preparing yourself for a meeting with Shirley Guswelle, an employee who reports to you. You are somewhat apprehensive about this meeting.

Under the policies of your firm's human resources department, annual performance evaluations are required for all employees to be conducted by their managers. Although your firm has an appraisal form that may be used, the actual format of the performance evaluation and the appraisal interview are left up to each manager to follow according to his or her needs and preferences. Prior to this year, your approach has been to fill out in your office a company performance appraisal form on each employee. You then would meet individually with each employee, show the employee the evaluation that you had made, and discuss the evaluation and suggest future areas for improvement. You have had rather mixed results with this approach. In particular, Shirley Guswelle, who is a lead employee (or working supervisor) in one of your merchandise departments, has been very defensive about the appraisals that you gave her on the last two occasions. In fact, you felt that she had become somewhat hostile and resentful of any suggestions for improvement that you had offered.

About three months ago, you attended a supervisory training program that was offered by your company for store managers and associate managers. The seminar was conducted by a university professor who had been hired by the company to develop and present the seminar. One of the sessions dealt with performance appraisals. In that session, the professor advocated using the self-appraisal technique in which the employee is given an opportunity to rate himself or herself in advance of a meeting with the manager, who then compares and discusses the employee's self-appraisal with his or her own evaluation. The professor stated that much research had indicated that when employees were allowed to appraise themselves, they tended to be more critical of themselves than were their managers. According to the professor, with this approach, employees also were usually more receptive to suggestions for improvement.

You decided to try this approach with Shirley Guswelle. About a week ago, you gave Ms. Guswelle a copy of the company's appraisal form and told her to fill it out as she evaluated her performance during the past year. You asked that she give it back to you a day or two before a scheduled meeting when you would discuss her self-appraisal and your own evaluation of her. Shirley Guswelle filled out an appraisal form on herself and gave it to you yesterday. You were astonished to find that she had given herself a "superior" or "outstanding" rating in every category on the performance appraisal. Further, under the section entitled "Areas for Improvement," Shirley Guswelle had left this section entirely blank.

You realize that this was not the outcome you had hoped for, nor was it consistent with what the professor had stated in the seminar. Your own appraisal of Shirley Guswelle is that her performance has been generally average at best, with several areas of serious deficiencies that need major improvement. She is coming to your office this afternoon to have her performance appraisal interview.

Questions & Instructions

• Is it possible for employees to evaluate their own performance accurately? Why or why not?
• What are the consequences of employees rating themselves so much more positively than their managers?
• If you were the manager in this case, what would you do differently in the performance review meeting?
• Design a self-appraisal form that would overcome some of the limitations of self-appraisals. The form you design should have at least three questions.